The Peter MacCallum Cancer Hospital in Melbourne made a PR announcement today, to summarize and publicize new research, published in the journal Cancer Cell, about discovering genetic pathways that help cancer cells metastasize in our bodies.
One thing that makes cancer so difficult to deal with is its ability to fight for its survival (see the end of this post I made last year). One of its abilities is angiogenesis, and this is what the new research was mostly about. Angiogenesis is basically the ability to create its own blood supply. Before, it looked like cancer cells were magically coaxing blood vessels to sprout new lines and bringing blood, nutrients, etc to the cancer cells. Not only does this allow for them to grow more, but it also provides a line for them to travel through the body.
The new research out of the Peter Mac center was finally able to describe the physiology of how that happens, what proteins are secreted, pathways activated, etc. In addition to creating blood supply lines, they widen lymph vessels and make them easier to travel through for metastasis. With this new understanding, they are now working on taking the next step: how can this knowledge be used to help treatment.
And fortunately, they've found a possible and simple solution: NSAIDS (anti-inflammatories like asprin), in their normal fighting of swelling, may counteract this "swelling" that cancer cells create in angiogenesis. The next step is to figure out how to target the anti-inflammatory effects toward potential lymph and blood vessel targets of these cancer cells.
The news report is in a PDF, so look to the bottom of this webpage for it to read the whole thing. (Though a few days or more after this post, it will probably be archived and you'll have to dig around just a little to find it again. The article title is "Gene discovered that could see common household drugs harnessed to fight cancer spread.")
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