Cancer driven by minority of cells
31 Jul 2014
A study conducted by the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has provided further insight into the causes of tumour growth.
A team of US cancer researchers has revealed that cancer growth is driven by a small minority of the numerous cells within a tumour.
The research has been published in the journal Nature.
The study offers new insight into how cancer develops and spreads through the body, and challenges the view that it is often cellular sub-groups with the greatest proliferative ability that control tumour growth.
“It is well-established that individual tumours are genetically heterogeneous
Senior author Kornelia Polyak
“It is well-established that individual tumours are genetically heterogeneous – comprised of multiple subgroups of cancer cells, each with its own genomic signature, or pattern of gene mutations,” said the study’s senior author Kornelia Polyak.
“We wanted to explore the factors that allow these subgroups to coexist, and to understand why the subgroup with the greatest proliferative ability does not always take over the tumour,” she said.
The team used ’growth-stunted’ tumours to generate several subgroups of cancer cells, each of which overproduced a different protein linked to tumour growth.
“Surprisingly, there was no link between a subgroup’s ability to drive tumour growth and its competitive expansion within the tumour,” said Polyak.
According to the research, when multiple subgroups were present in the same tumour, they interfered with each other’s expansion. This suggests that once heterogeneity arises within a tumour, it tends to persist, as it becomes difficult for a single subgroup to take over the tumour.
Reporting on the research, Cancer UK professor Charles Swanton said: “Understanding how the different populations of cells within a tumour cooperate to drive the disease’s development is a phenomenon that’s being intensely studied by researchers worldwide.”
Less than a month ago scientists from the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) announced a breakthrough in understanding tumour growth.
According to the ICR findings, a network of signals active in almost all forms of cancer sends the protein factories in human cells into overdrive, shedding light on the cause of a tumour’s uncontrollable growth.
