A team of researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York (USA) has discovered the exact way and when cancer cells manage to invade other tissues in order to avoid metastasis, the first cause of death in cancer patients .
During metastasis, cancer cells spread from the tumor of origin to other organs . Thus, the researchers wanted to find out how cancer cells reached the bloodstream to gain access to the rest of the body. Thanks to advanced microscopy techniques, they were able to visualize the exact place within the main tumor cell and the precise moment in which the Rac 1 protein (a protein that plays a major role in "invasion") was activated during the process.
“It is as if we plugged the cell into a current so that it emits light. In doing so, we visualize the intricate signaling circuitry of the Rac1 protein that regulates invasion ; and, as if we were electricians, we can try to modulate a part of that circuit to understand it better ”, says José Javier Bravo-Cordero, the Spanish researcher leading the study.
The conclusions of the work, which have been published in the journal Nature Cell Biology , will serve to allow the future design of specific drugs that block the molecular circuits of cancer cells to prevent them from spreading to other organs.
