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Scientists discover ways to predict which cancer is most likely to spread around the body, broadening the path to potential new treatments and stopping the most aggressive forms.
Researchers found that some malignant cells change shape in response to surrounding biological structures, making it easier to seed fresh tumors elsewhere.
This study highlights its focus on chemical targeting of surrounding tissues as part of an effort to stop cancer cells spreading to other organs. This spreading process known as metastasis is a hallmark of many cancer deaths, as it makes diseases much more difficult to treat.
“Our research revealed the roadmap that cancer cells follow to get out of tumors, allowing them to cause secondary tumors elsewhere in the body,” says Cancer Cells from the Cancer Institute. Victoria Sants Moreno, professor of metastasis biology, said that research in London led the study.
“Now that we understand this roadmap, we can try to target different aspects of that to stop the spread of aggressive cancer.”
The study, published Friday in Nature Communications, is the product of almost a decade of research into how cancer cells interact with surrounding biological support structures known as the extracellular matrix. This physical framework of cells, which researchers describe as a kind of biological “scaffolds,” influences the way tumors develop.
Scientists, including experts at the BARTS Cancer Institute at Queen Mary University of London, have investigated tumor tissues in 99 patients suffering from melanoma skin and breast cancer.
They saw that extracellular matrix fibers on the outer edge of the tumor were separated from the malignant tumor and provided a “track” that continued for the cancer to spread. Furthermore, tumor cells in that area were rounded. This is a common feature of highly invasive cancer.
Cancer cells at the tumor’s borderline had more genetic properties related to their ability to survive and spread, researchers found. Cancer patients with high presence of these types of genes died earlier than their peers whose genes do not exhibit these properties, they said.
According to the World Health Organization, cancer is one of the world’s biggest murderers, affecting about one in five people over the course of their lifetime. It accounted for 20 million new cases and nearly 100 million deaths in 2022, Who says.
This study could strengthen interest in the development of therapeutic targeting. Lysyl oxidase enzymes play a role in binding the extracellular matrix. One such drug is being investigated as a tool to target pancreatic cancer.
Understanding how cancer spreads is “crucial to finding treatments that can stop the disease from moving forward,” says the executive director of research and innovation at Cancer Research UK, a co-founder of the study. said Iain Foulkes.
“This study shows how much cancer depends on the surrounding scaffolding to move and spread elsewhere,” Foulkes said. “Reducing this scaffolding could deprive cancer of opportunities to broaden the chances of successful treatment and improve it. We look forward to further research that we hope to achieve this goal.”
