Release date: 2016-04-20
A new study by the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) shows that cancer cells can pass through the smallest blood vessels in the body in a horrible and unique way. Finding ways to inhibit them from doing so may help slow the spread of this deadly disease.
The process of cancer cell spread is also known as cancer cell metastasis, a process in which specific cells enter the blood vessels after the primary tumor ruptures. Cancer cell metastasis is the leading cause of death in cancer-related deaths (about 90%). Scientists originally thought that larger clusters of cancer cells could not pass ultra-thin capillaries. But MGH researchers found that this was not the case. Instead, larger clusters of cancer cells reposition their positions, queued through obstacles in turn, and once they pass through these bottlenecks, they gather on the other side of the bottleneck. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Sam Au, the lead author of the study, said: "This information has changed the standard description of cancer metastasis in the medical community, enabling us to come up with better ways to overcome it." Scientists have long suspected the so-called circulating tumor cells (CTC) Play an important role in the process of cancer cell metastasis. Previous studies have shown that circulating tumor cells in the arms of cancer patients are far more than the number of tumor cells in the primary tumor, which means that the circulating tumor cell population can certainly pass through the smallest blood vessels in the human body.
But scientists don't know how circulating tumor cell populations do this, after all, they are much larger than blood vessels. In addition, the number of circulating tumor cell populations is very rare compared to normal human cells, and it is difficult to distinguish them from billions of red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets in blood vessels. This is tantamount to finding a needle in a haystack.
In order to isolate circulating tumor cell populations, the MGH team used the most advanced microfluidic technology (also known as on-chip laboratories, which are often used as diagnostic tools for rapid processing of large amounts of blood). With these microfluidic chips, you can get rid of other interferers through the “negative consumption†process.
Last year, co-author Mehmet Toner used the chip to determine the extent to which circulating tumor cell populations are common in the blood. In the latest experiment, the team eroded a tapered channel at critical points on the chip, creating a bottleneck that was almost as wide as the capillaries. Then they took pictures of the action of circulating tumor cells in these places. Next, the MGH team injected the human CTC population into the blood vessels of the zebrafish embryos (their transparent blood vessels are easier to image and are comparable to human capillary size). In both cases, the circulating tumor cell population is folded into a long chain to pass through these necks, and then they quickly return to their original state on the other side.
Au said that this strange behavior of circulating tumor cell populations seems to be related to the strength of traction between individual tumor cells. These cells have been communicating with each other, and in this study, the connection has been strong enough to allow the circulating tumor cell population to be easily re-distributed without damaging individual cells or preventing individual cells from proliferating in the future.
The good news is that humans can find potential ways to inhibit their spread from their behavior. Au said: "If we can break the connection between circulating tumor cell populations or prevent them from unfolding, then we may be able to control their ability to pass through narrow blood vessels."
Source: Omelette Net
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