New research published December 24 2009 in the journal Cell, shows that cancer cells can self-seed, causing increased tumor growth and metastasis. Until now, the process of how cancer spreads to distant organs was not known, and thought to be the result of tumor growth alone. The findings are important, and shed new light on the future of cancer treatment.
The new findings that cancer cells self-seed means that malignant cancer cells find their way back to the primary tumor. Signals sent out from the cancer tumor attract those cells back. When that occurs, cancer cells then become aggressive, metastasize and grow. The research leading to the discovery was performed on mice.
“These results provide us with opportunities to explore new targeted therapies that may interfere with the self-seeding process and perhaps slow or even prevent tumor progression,” said the study’s senior author, Joan Massagué, PhD, Chair of the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.
Discovery of the way cancer cells return to the primary tumor site and self-seed gives insight as to why cancer can recur. Genes responsible for self-seeding of cancer and infiltration that causes cancer tumors to grow include IL-6 and IL-8, which attract the most aggressive segments of circulating tumor cells, and FSCN1 and MMP that facilitate infiltration of circulating tumor cells into a tumor.
In cases of breast cancer, the scientists found that the same genes promote aggressive forms of cancer explaining the propensity of cancer to spread to the bones, lungs and brain.
In the past, researchers thought that cancer tumor cells grow, and then spread to distant organs. The new research shows that the process of tumor progression with cancer is the result of self-seeding.
“This was always thought to reflect the ability of larger cancers to release more cells with metastatic potential. But this association may actually be caused by the ability of aggressive cancer cells to self-seed, promoting both local tumor growth and distant metastases by similar mechanisms,” said study co-author Larry Norton, MD, Deputy Physician-in-Chief for Breast Cancer Programs at Memorial Sloan-Kettering.
The new findings are important, and provide new groundwork for the future treatment of cancer. Large cancer tumors that self-seed carry a worse prognosis. Self-seeding of cancer cells is also now thought to occur in cases of melanoma and colon cancer, based on the newest research.
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by on 27. Dec, 2009 in Health News
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