New theory about how lung cancer spreads may improve treatment
A joint research group in Finland has made a discovery concerning the mechanism that lung cancer uses to spread and form metastases. The research group includes VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and the University of Turku in cooperation with the University of Heidelberg.
Research done by both groups has found an explanation for how cancer cells spread from the original tumor to other parts of the body. It was previously believed that cancer cells spread when they lose the factors binding them to other cells of the tumor, allowing them to detach and move to other locations in the body. Now, Saara Tuomi, a PhD student in the research group, has made videos that show that migrating lung cancer cells move by using adhesion receptors in a previously undiscovered manner.
This finding reveals the ability of cancer cells to change in such a way that the factor that helped them stay in place also assists their adhesion receptors – a precondition necessary for the cell migration that makes cancer so lethal. Evidence suggests that lung cancer patients who died because of metastases had tumor cells that began migrating with this newly discovered mechanism.
The discovery means there are new opportunities to develop cancer treatment medicine, as this migration mechanism is not required for normal, non-cancerous cells.
Professor Johanna Ivaska’s research group, in cooperation with the University of Heidelberg, discovered a new factor controlling the appearance of cancer cell adhesion receptors, a protein that has been named SCAI, a cancer invasion inhibitor. The findings show that many cancers can eliminate the suppressing factor, which allows the cancer to add to the number of adhesion receptors to begin spreading. It is elimination of the suppressing factor that allows the cancer to spread.
When these findings are combined, they offer a significant contribution to our understanding of how cancer spreads.
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