But once the cells produce lactate, what is the ultimate fate of that lactate molecule? What happens to the lactate? So we see that metabolizing skeletal muscle cells or red blood cells cannot actually use the lactate molecule in any useful way. They can't actually do anything useful with the lactate. But that doesn't mean that other cells, specialized cells of our body, cannot actually use the lactate for something special, for something useful. In fact, two specialized types of cells that can and do use lactate produced by red blood cell and skeleton muscle cells are cardiac muscle cells and liver cells.