Why cancers possess a wanderlust, spreading from one site to another, has been one of the most confounding questions in medicine, and now New York scientists have unmasked the role of infinitesimal “scouts,” cells and proteins that coalesce to seek out fertile ground for a tumor’s spread.
The finding turns a corner in the history of cancer research, experts say, demonstrating that a series of ominous events lead these scouts — dispatched by the tumor itself — to find fresh ground and lay a foundation for a new cancer. In some cases, the foundation can be laid years before seeds of the new tumor arrive.
“For many years it was thought that cancer was happening in one way: A tumor developed, a piece of it broke off and traveled through the bloodstream and planted somewhere else. Even though people forever and a day thought that this was the case, we now realize that there is more to it than that,” said Dr. Rosandra Reich Kaplan, a pediatric oncologist who holds joint appointments with Weill Cornell Medical College and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan.
She said the finding opens a new window on understanding cancer, and could soon lead to new diagnostic targets and more treatments. “We’re hoping to conduct a very large trial with patients in about a year or two,” Kaplan said.
Dr. Goarav Gupta, a cancer researcher at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, who was not involved in the research, broached a similar possibility earlier this year when he described how his studies eavesdropped on the “crosstalk” between the initial tumor and the spot to which it spread. Kaplan and her colleagues delineated the multiple steps in this network.
BY DELTHIA RICKS
STAFF WRITER
Posted December 22 2005, 9:51 PM EST
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