This is unexpected. Everyone thought that an errant cell took of andspread by multiplying. How about simply converting neighbors as wellif not mostly. The way cancer does spread is quick and this trickmakes that process possible as well as its rapid spread in the body.
The hard question is to actually stop the process itself to alsostall the growth and spreading behavior in its tracks. Not assatisfactory as an outright cure but it would still work very well insaving lives.
In the meantime we have a major new research avenue.
Canadian scientists discover howcancer cells communicate with healthy cells in major breakthrough
Sheryl Ubelacker,Canadian Press | Dec 21, 2012
http://life.nationalpost.com/2012/12/21/canadian-scientists-discover-how-cancer-cells-communicate-with-healthy-cells-in-major-breakthrough/
TORONTO — Canadianscientists have made a major discovery about how cancer spreads:tumour cells appear to co-opt normal cells around them, in effect“talking” them into helping the cancer set up shop in other partsof the body.
The process, calledmetastasis, is what often makes malignancies so challenging to treat— and typically more deadly.
“People often thinkof cancer as this separate tissue, sort of like a foreign invader, athing that’s sitting inside that’s separate from their normalbody,” said principal investigator Jeff Wrana, a molecularbiologist at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute in Toronto.
“But, in fact, thecancers are intimately communicating in a dialogue with the normalcells around them,” he said. “So basically, the normal cells arepassing signals to the tumour cells and the tumour cells are passingsignals to the normal cells.”
Working with humanbreast cancer cells in the lab, Wrana and colleagues found thattumour cells get sets of instructions in the form of protein“messages” passed between healthy and cancerous cells.
It’s been known fora while that communication existed between these cell types, but itwas thought it was akin to “words” or incomplete “sentences.”
‘We discovered thatthe normal cells were basically sending an entire paragraph ofinstructions to the tumour cells’
“But what wediscovered was that the normal cells were basically sending an entireparagraph of instructions to the tumour cells,” said Wrana.
“And theseinstructions were actually telling the tumour cells how to use itsown machinery to invade and metastasize, to spread throughout thebody.”
The protein that doesthe talking is part of tiny fragments of cells called exosomes. Incancer, the tumour cell releases exosomes to influence neighbouringcells — and those nearby normal cells secrete exosomes that helptumour cells to spread.
‘The tumourcells are kind of tweaking the normal cells and making themmisbehave’
“The tumour cellsare kind of tweaking the normal cells and making them misbehave,”explained Wrana. “Then these normal cells start producing thingsthat actually help the tumour cell.”
The researchers, whowere at first surprised and skeptical of their finding, also lookedfor the phenomenon in lab mice bred as a model for human breastcancer.
They found thecommunication between normal and tumour cells also occurred in theanimals. And Wrana said the same process would go on in people.
Handout/Mount SinaiHospital/Canadian PressJeff Wrana, a molecular biologist at theSamuel Lunenfeld Research Institute in Toronto, says members of hisresearch team were at first surprised and skeptical of their finding,but also looked for the phenomenon in lab mice bred as a model forhuman breast cancer. They found the communication between normal andtumour cells also occurred in the animals. And Wrana said the sameprocess would go on in people.
“And it’s thatspreading metastases, for instance to the lung, that is the cause ofdeath for a vast number of cancer patients.”
Metastases thatoriginate from a primary cancer site in other organs — forinstance, a prostate tumour that transfers its cells into bone—likely are activated in a similar way, said Wrana, whose lab willnext look for this cell-to-cell dialogue in invasive bladder cancer.
He said the discoveryof the exosomes’ role is important because it gives researchers anew treatment target: “If we can interfere with that, then we canblock the ability of the cancer cells to spread out of the primarysite.”
The research team islooking to develop drugs known as biologics that would block thissignal pathway between cells.
“Instead of onlytargeting the primary tumour, we can now pinpoint the cells in thetumour’s environment that are responding to the tumour and targetthose too,” said Valbona Luga, a co-author of the study publishedThursday in the journal Cell.
“We hope to use ournew knowledge of the tumour’s immediate surroundings to interceptits signals to cancer cells, and by doing so, drastically impedetumour spreading,” she said.
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