The Little B****rds

I'm sorry I just don't have a better word for cancer cells which spread.We'll just call them the little B's. Anyway, some new research has been done on metastatic cancer cells. The goal is to find them and snuff them out, obviously.Dr Rauscher of the Wistar Institute's cancer center recently discussed some new information discovered about breast cancer metastatic cells:"Solid tumors such as breast cancers grow their own blood supply, a process called angiogenesis. It's clear that breast tumors shed malignant cells into the bloodstream. And it's clear that most of these cells get killed by the stress of shearing off from the primary tumor, or by the immune system. But in some patients, a tiny subset of sloughed-off cells develop the colossal powers that are required to become metastatic. At what point does that happen? "That's one of the questions we still have to answer," Rauscher said.Recently, the ability to rapidly sequence whole genomes (the entire genetic code of a cell) has enabled scientists to analyze differences between primary tumor cells and metastatic cells. Surprisingly, Rauscher said, "there is not much genetic difference."That finding has big implications. First, metastatic cells may not have a distinctive mutation that can be used as a neat molecular target for new drugs. Second, the important difference between primary tumor cells and metastatic cells may involve which genes are turned on and off by biochemical processes. These outside-the-gene activation ...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: breast cancer cancer cells cancer research metastatic cancer Source Type: blogs