Secrets of cancer's spread uncovered
Scientists claim the discovery could lead to new treatments
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Tuesday, 22, May 2007 05:54
Scientists claim to have made an important discovery in understanding how cancers spread, potentially leading to new ways of treating the disease.
Researchers from the University of Manchester studied embryonic stem (ES) cells to analyse how some tumours are able to migrate to other parts of the body, a process which makes the treatment of cancer more difficult.
As tumour cells develop, they change shape to become 'mesenchymal', where they do not bind together and form tissues where cells are able to move around.
Researcher Dr Chris Ward said the team found that ES cells spontaneously change, losing proteins that bind to each other and having other protein alterations that are characteristic of spreading cancer cells.
"By studying these ES cells we have already identified a novel component of this transition process," he said.
"We expect the use of ES cells will lead to the identification of other unknown factors involved in cancer cell spread, hopefully leading to new avenues for cancer therapy. Finding out more about the mechanism that controls the spread of cancer cells will help us find new treatments that can prevent tumours spreading and make them essentially harmless."
Derek Napier, chief executive of the Association for International Cancer Research, said that the research "will open the door to a detailed dissection of the process that makes cancers spread around the body".
"Scientific research occasionally makes sudden leaps forward when a new way of investigating something is discovered," he added.
"We predict that this will lead to a huge growth in our understanding of cancer spread and the development on several new approaches to stopping it."
The research is published in the journal Molecular Biology of the Cell.