Cancer spreading: Caught in the act

Scientists at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA have taken a major step toward confirming an unusual theory of how some cancer cells metastasize. Their findings may lead to new strategies for keeping melanoma from spreading.  A commonly held theory about how cancer spreads is that tumor cells break off from the primary tumor and travel through the bloodstream to reach other organs, where they attach and grow into new tumors. But questions about that process have remained because circulating tumor cells in the blood sometimes have a short lifespan, and because of a lack of knowledge about how the cells leave the bloodstream and attach to organs. The research team was led by Laurent Bentolila, director of UCLA’s Advanced Light Microscopy/Spectroscopy lab, and included Claire Lugassy and Raymond Barnhill (formerly of UCLA and now of France’s Institut Curie). They theorized that — in addition to the prevailing theory about how cancer spreads — tumor cells also could spread through the body by a mechanism called angiotropism, meaning that they could travel along the outside of blood vessels, without entering into the bloodstream. Over the past decade, Lugassy and Barnhill gathered proof that tumor cells, especially those of the deadly skin cancer melanoma, creep along the outside of blood vessels like tiny spiders to spread cancer. They also found that the migrating cancer cells mimicked pericytes — cells that line the capillary blood vessels — which preven...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news