Ketones and lactate increase cancer cell "stemness," driving recurrence, metastasis and poor clinical outcome in breast cancer: achieving personalized medicine via Metabolo-Genomics.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21512313/

Taken together, our results are consistent with the idea that lactate and ketone utilization in cancer cells promotes the "cancer stem cell" phenotype, resulting in significant decreases in patient survival.
One possible mechanism by which these high-energy metabolites might induce stemness is by increasing the pool of Acetyl-CoA, leading to increased histone acetylation, and elevated gene expression.