Cancer cells temporarily adopt gene program to metastasize

Scientists at the Hubrecht Institute and UMC Utrecht have discovered that cancer cells use a program to metastasize. The biological program is also used in early development and wound healing. This finding may lead to therapeutic targets in the future, to specifically inhibit the first steps in the formation of metastases. The article is published in Cell Reports this week.

Metastases are the main cause of mortality among cancer patients. To form metastases, tumour cells have to leave the primary tumour, enter the blood vessels and eventually grow metastases at a secondary site. It has been extensively debated whether tumour cells hijack a developmental program called epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition to be able to move and metastasize.

The scientists, led by professor Jacco van Rheenen, show that all tumour cells that were motile in the tumour have switch on this developmental program. Beerling et al. created a breast cancer model in which tumour cells switch colour upon turning on this developmental program. By filming metastatic tumour cells in living tissue, they were able to test this hypothesis directly for the first time in non-manipulated tumours.

The work of Beerling et al. sheds light on the dynamic processes that underlie the formation of metastases. They characterized the genes that are different in the cells that are able to move compared to the cells that are not. This information might lead to potential therapeutic targets in the future, to specifically inhibit the first steps in the formation of metastases.

Article: http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(16)30137-1