Researchers Target Metastasis

Metastasis is the process by which cancer cells escape their original tumors and travel to other parts of the body to create new tumors. The majority of cancer deaths are caused by metastasis. But researchers have learned that turning breast cancer cells into fat may stop them from spreading. (1, 2)

Researchers from the University of Basel in Switzerland studied how cell plasticity allows cancer cells to metastasize. According to their study, which they published in the journal Cancer Cell in January 2019, “Cancer cell plasticity facilitates the development of therapy resistance and malignant progression.” (1, 2)

Cancer cells are able to emulate the characteristics of other cells to travel through the body and avoid being destroyed by treatments. This process, called “metastasis cascade”, is made up of three stages: (1, 3)

• • Invasion is when cancer cells first disconnect from the original tumor. To do this, they abandon one of their cellular properties: the ability to stick to other cells and other things around them.
  • In intravasation, cancer cells enter blood vessels to travel to other areas of the body.

• Extravasation is when cancer cells exit the blood vessels in preparation for attaching at a new location and multiplying to create a new tumor.

Turning Cancer Cells Into Fat Cells

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer, and it’s responsible for the most cancer-related deaths for women. (1)

The World Health Organization estimates that over 2.1 million women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year. And about 627,000 died from breast cancer in 2018 alone. (1, 3)

Most breast cancer deaths are caused by metastasis. So preventing breast cancer cells from spreading to other parts of the body and creating new tumors could have a profound impact on women surviving this disease. (1)

The research team from the University of Basel discovered that they could turn breast cancer cells into fat cells using a combination of drugs. Once turned into fat cells, they could not detach themselves from the primary tumor and form new tumors. The study’s authors said that this led to the “repression of primary tumor invasion and metastasis formation.” Keeping cancer from spreading will make it easier to treat successfully. (1, 2)

To turn the breast cancer cells into fat cells, researchers used a combination of rosiglitazone, a diabetes drug, and another drug called trametinib. According to the study authors, trametinib “efficiently inhibits cancer cell invasion, dissemination, and metastasis formation in various preclinical mouse models of breast cancer.” (1, 2)

Future Cancer Therapies

The study authors believe that “[t]he results underscore the pivotal role of cancer cell plasticity in malignant tumor progression and reveal the therapeutic potential that lies in the targeting of cellular plasticity.” (2)

Gerhard Christofori, senior study author and Biomedicine professor at the University of Basel, told Medical News Today, “In future, this innovative therapeutic approach could be used in combination with conventional chemotherapy to suppress both primary tumor growth and the formation of deadly metastases.” (1)