Often cancerous tumors start in the lung, breast, skin, kidney or other body parts and spread to even the brain. If detected early, they can be controlled. It’s when the disease spread or metastasizes, that it often turns lethal. In fact,metastasis is the cause of approximately 90 percent of deaths among cancer patients.
Research led by Anand Asthagiri, associate professor of bio-engineering and chemical engineering at Northeastern University aims to answer questions like how does metastasis come about? And can we stop it? The research provides an astonishing look at the biophysical properties that permit breast cancer cells to “slide” by obstacles and travel out of their primary tumor toward a blood vessel that will carry them to a new site.
His research reveals how the abnormal protein-fiber scaffolding of tumors and the agility of the cancer cells combined together provides them with the ability to slide off and escape to new regions. It could also help screen cells and produce effective cancer drugs and help diagnose the stage of cancer early on. “In this paper, we show that cancer cells migrating on these protein fibers have a unique ability that enhances their invasion capacity: When they bump into other cells—which the micro-environment is packed with—they slide around them. Normal cells halt and reverse direction,” says Asthagiri.
However, questions start arising on why and what gave the cancer cells this remarkable agility “Cancer cells often lack E-cadherin,” says Asthagiri, a sticky protein that enables cells to bind to one another. “When we introduced it genetically, the cancer cells’ ability to slide diminished. And when we took E-cadherin out of normal cells, they acquired some sliding ability once the fibers were wide enough.”
Questions, of course, remain. Do other types of tumorous cells also have the ability to slide? What additional genes play a role? “There are so many types of cells in a tumor environment—immune cells, blood cells, and so on,” he says. “We want to better emulate what’s happening in the body rather than in isolated cells interacting on a platform.”
Anisha Naidu