Advances in research on metastasis
A study conducted by a team of scientists and published in Cell (see summary of study here) this month, relieves important information about the development of cancer.
Scientists already know a lot about how they originate and develop tumors, but until now little has been known about how to achieve a cancer metastasize and invade other tissues and organs. Now a team of researchers from MIT and the Whitehead Institute have discovered that tumors spread achieved through its ability to reactivate and lead an inactive protein should have been removed during the embryonic stage.
“As a result, cancer cells acquire in a single step many of the skills they need to execute the complex stages of metastasis” according to Weinberg, a researcher at MIT and director of the research project.
The metastatic process is long and complex as the cancer cells first must invade a nearby tissue, then get the flow of blood or lymphatic vessel. Then they have to migrate through the bloodstream to a new area of the body, leaving the flow and establish a new colony. There are many steps that scientists have always wondered how it was possible that the cells had the capacity to carry them all out.
But according to this new research, do not. Rather than cover the whole process, cancer cells hijack an existing cellular process (“Twist”) and use it to spread through the body.
Twist is a regulator of genes necessary at the stage of embryo development, when it allows the cells to move from one embryo to another site, assigning different tissues. But once developed organism, Twist has no function, and remains dormant in the tissues of the body set up for life. According to recent advances in cancer research, cancer cells fail to reactivate the Twist protein, thus acquiring the ability to move throughout the body