In the brutal fight against cancer, news like this is extremely encouraging:
Metastatic cancer cells, which cause 90% of cancer-related deaths, must overcome numerous hurdles to spread from a primary tumor through the bloodstream[.]
A new study led by investigators from the Mass General Cancer Center has identified a gene whose expression confers a growth advantage to these cells.
The gene's expression "allows metastatic cancer cells to cause changes to their surrounding environment so that they can grow in new locations in the body." Its discovery allows doctors to potentially pursue "novel therapeutic avenues to specifically target metastatic cancer."
There have already been promising results in mouse experiments. Researchers "first compared gene expression patterns in primary versus metastatic tumors in mice with pancreatic cancer or breast cancer."
They subsequently identified several genes linked to metastatic tumor cells, after which they "silenced each gene individually":
In these experiments, silencing the Gstt1 gene had no effect on primary tumor cells from mice, but it stripped metastatic cancer cells of their ability to grow and spread.
(I'm sure the mice appreciated that!)
It also blocked cell growth in two metastatic-derived human pancreatic cancer cell lines.
The findings "could lead to new strategies for the treatment of metastatic disease" which would be "especially impactful for pancreatic cancer, in which most patients present with metastases when initially diagnosed."
The absolute best.
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