Cookies policy

In Brief

7 January 2015

Cancer copies how healthy cells move to invade organs

TO INVADE different parts of the body, cancer cells learn to switch between two modes of moving. Now we know how.

Many types of cell move around the body. For example, fibroblasts move in to help skin wounds heal, using adhesive forces to slide forward. If the cut gets infected, white blood cells rush in propelling themselves using electrostatic forces, among others.

Many invasive cancers have learned both methods, switching between them to suit their environment. To find out how, Erik Sahai from Cancer Research UK in London looked at cells moving in the egg sac of fruit flies and tweaked genes to work out which proteins are important for this. Next, he searched databases to see if any of these proteins also go awry in cancer, hitting upon a bundle called the STRIPAK complex.

Without these misbehaving proteins, the cells are locked into the “fibroblastic” mode and are less dangerous, says Sahai. He plans to look at whether people with these proteins are more likely to have invasive cancer, work which could guide treatment (Nature Cell Biology,

More on these topics: