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Tumors can 'self seed,' discover researchers
Source: Agencies |
December 26, 2009, Saturday
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TUMORS can not only spread through the body by sending out tiny cells called seeds, but they can re-seed themselves, researchers said in a report that may help explain why tumors grow back even after they are removed.
They said their findings, published in the journal Cell on Thursday, may also help lead to the development of new drugs to stop the process of cancer spreading, known as metastasis.
"Circulating tumor cells can also colonize their tumors of origin, in a process that we call 'tumor self-seeding'," said Joan Massague of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
"Now we have found that tumors can recapture some of their most delinquent children, enriching themselves with the most aggressive metastatic cells, enabling them to grow faster and more robustly," Massague, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher, said in a statement.
"Now we are thinking that in some cases, maybe treatment left inflamed tissue that had been a home for those cells that escaped and were residing somewhere temporarily, perhaps in the bone marrow," he added.
"They may have re-entered the circulation in the weeks and months after surgery, and now, through the self-seeding process, have homed in on this tissue and reproduced the tumor."
Massague's team of researchers used mice, injecting them with human breast cancer cells that had been genetically engineered with a jellyfish protein to make them glow green under ultraviolet light.
They tracked these cells as they spread through the bodies of the mice.
Immune system signaling chemicals, including interleukin 6 and interleukin 8, appear to "call" the tumor cells home, Massague's team found.
Researchers are working on cancer vaccines that could harness the immune system to attack cancer cells more effectively.
This latest study suggests it might also be necessary to tone down some aspects of the immune system for treatments to work properly.
They said their findings, published in the journal Cell on Thursday, may also help lead to the development of new drugs to stop the process of cancer spreading, known as metastasis.
"Circulating tumor cells can also colonize their tumors of origin, in a process that we call 'tumor self-seeding'," said Joan Massague of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
"Now we have found that tumors can recapture some of their most delinquent children, enriching themselves with the most aggressive metastatic cells, enabling them to grow faster and more robustly," Massague, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher, said in a statement.
"Now we are thinking that in some cases, maybe treatment left inflamed tissue that had been a home for those cells that escaped and were residing somewhere temporarily, perhaps in the bone marrow," he added.
"They may have re-entered the circulation in the weeks and months after surgery, and now, through the self-seeding process, have homed in on this tissue and reproduced the tumor."
Massague's team of researchers used mice, injecting them with human breast cancer cells that had been genetically engineered with a jellyfish protein to make them glow green under ultraviolet light.
They tracked these cells as they spread through the bodies of the mice.
Immune system signaling chemicals, including interleukin 6 and interleukin 8, appear to "call" the tumor cells home, Massague's team found.
Researchers are working on cancer vaccines that could harness the immune system to attack cancer cells more effectively.
This latest study suggests it might also be necessary to tone down some aspects of the immune system for treatments to work properly.
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