Evidence in mice that bacteria in tumors help cancer cells metastasize

Bacteria promote cancer metastasis by bolstering the strength of host cells against mechanical stress in the bloodstream, promoting cell survival during tumor progression, researchers report.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Cause of metastasis in prostate cancer discovered

Prostate cancers remain localized in the majority of cases, giving affected individuals a good chance of survival. However, about 20% of patients develop incurable metastatic prostate cancer, resulting in approximately 5,000 deaths each year in Austria alone. Medical research has not yet adequately explained why metastases occur in some people and not in others. A research team has now discovered specific changes in a protein that drive the growth and spread of prostate cancer.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Cause of metastasis in prostate cancer discovered

Prostate cancers remain localized in the majority of cases, giving affected individuals a good chance of survival. However, about 20% of patients develop incurable metastatic prostate cancer, resulting in approximately 5,000 deaths each year in Austria alone. Medical research has not yet adequately explained why metastases occur in some people and not in others. A research team has now discovered specific changes in a protein that drive the growth and spread of prostate cancer.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Getting fuel to an invading cell’s front line

Invading armies need a steady supply of fuel and armaments. That’s just as true when the invaders are cells, such as when tumor cells break away and spread to other parts of the body in a process called metastasis — the most deadly part of cancer. Now, a study in C. elegans worms provides new insight into how invading cells deploy fuel to the front lines of invasion to power their break-through machinery.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Researchers reduce breast cancer metastasis in animal models by modifying tumor electrical properties

Researchers have found that manipulating voltage patterns of tumor cells — using ion channel blockers already FDA-approved as treatments for other diseases — can in fact significantly reduce metastasis in animal models of breast cancer.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Reducing copper in the body alters cancer metabolism to reduce risk of aggressive breast cancer

Depleting copper levels may reduce the production of energy that cancer cells need to travel and establish themselves in other parts of the body by a process referred to as metastasis, according to a new study. The discovery of the underlying mechanisms of how copper depletion may help reduce metastasis in breast cancer will help inform the design of future clinical trials.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Small molecule may prevent metastasis in colorectal cancer

The compound works by hindering a key pathway that cancer cells rely upon to hoard energy, and is already undergoing clinical trials.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Different types of cancers are likely to spread to specific areas of the brain

Brain metastasis occurs when cancer in one part of the body spreads to the brain. The lifetime incidence of such metastatic brain tumors in cancer patients is between 20%-45%, research shows.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Experimental model of ovarian cancer shows effect of healthy cell arrangement in metastasis

A key element to slowing metastasis in ovarian cancer is understanding the mechanisms of how tumor cells invade tissues. Biophysics researchers explain how microscopic defects in how healthy cells line up can alter how easily ovarian cancer cells invade tissue. Using an experimental model, the group found that disruptions in the normal cellular layout, called topological defects, affect the rate of tumor cell invasion.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Discovery within human cell cycle process to bring new understanding of cellular diseases

New research has uncovered an essential mechanism coordinating the processes of cell division and adhesion within humans. This discovery has profound potential for advancing understanding of cell adhesion signalling in cancerous tumor progression and metastasis.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Drug doubles down on bone cancer, metastasis

Researchers develop an antibody conjugate called BonTarg that delivers drugs to bone tumors and inhibits metastasis.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Pinpointing how cancer cells turn aggressive

As deadly as it is, cancer metastasis is a poorly understood process. A new study describes a cutting-edge tool for tracing the lineage and gene expression of thousands of individual metastatic cancer cells. Their findings open new angles for investigating the processes that drive metastasis.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Causal mechanism of link between cancer and obesity

A review study advances knowledge about the connection between obesity-associated inflammation and cancer. The researchers suggest that inflammatory cells with immunosuppressive properties may act as a critical biological link between obesity and cancer risk, progression, and metastasis.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

First detailed look at crucial enzyme advances cancer research

Because Taspase 1 dysregulation is increasingly implicated in the genesis and metastasis of various cancers, it has become an attractive candidate for drug development. But before this can happen, researchers will need a highly detailed blueprint of the structure of this protease. In a new study appearing in the Cell Press journal Structure, researchers from Arizona State University describe their investigations, which reveal the structure of Taspase 1 as never before.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Embryonic tissue undergoes phase transition

When scientists at the Institute of Science and Technology (IST) Austria looked at developing zebrafish embryos, they observed an abrupt and dramatic change: within just a few minutes, the solid-like embryonic tissue becomes fluid-like. What could cause this change and, what is its role in the further development of the embryo? In a multidisciplinary study published in the journal Cell, they found answers that could change how we look at key processes in development and disease, such as tumor metastasis.

Quelle: IDW Informationsdienst Wissenschaft

New organelle involved in cancer metastasis

Researchers discovered a new, still-unnamed organelle that plays a role in bone metastasis and is formed via liquid-liquid phase separation — when liquid blobs of living materials merge into each other.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Membrane around tumors may be key to preventing metastasis

Engineers have characterized the properties of the protective membrane around tumors and found that this lining may be a good target for therapies to prevent metastasis.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Genomic test helps estimate risk of prostate cancer metastasis, death

A commercially available genomic test may help oncologists better determine which patients with recurrent prostate cancer may benefit from hormone therapy, according to new research.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Cancer models created by mechanical engineers offer new insight into tumor growth

Engineers have developed in vitro — in the lab — lymphatic vessel model to study the growth of tumor emboli, collections of tumor cells within vessels that are often associated with increased metastasis and tumor recurrence.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Changing the perspective on the ‚Cinderella of the cytoskeleton‘

SETD2, known for its involvement on gene expression, also can affect functions controlled by the cytoskeleton, such as movement, metastasis and migration, which are very important for cancer cells.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Mitochondria and the evolutionary roots of cancer

Cancer is a group of almost 200 diseases that involve variety of changes in cell structure, morphology, and physiology. Cancer phenotype is underlying several alterations in cellular dynamics with three most critical features, which includes self-sufficiency in growth signals and insensitivity to inhibitory signals, evasion of programmed cell death and limitless replicative potential with a potential for the invasion of other organs. Cancer disease is widespread among metazoans. Some properties of cancer cells such as uncontrolled cell proliferation, lack of apoptosis, hypoxia, fermentative metabolism and free cell motility, i.e. metastasis, resemble a prokaryotic lifestyle, which leads to the assumption of a reversal like evolution from eucariotic back to proteobacterial state. This phenotype matches the phenotype of the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) that resulted from the endosymbiosis between archaebacteria and α-proteobacteria, which later became the mitochondria.

 Davila AF and Zamorano P (2013) Mitochondria and the evolutionary roots of cancer. Phys. Biol. 10 (2013) 026008, doi:10.1088/1478-3975/10/2/026008