American scientists headed by Janet Tse at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge exposed different breast cancer cell lines to different pressures. They found out that these breast cancer cells penetrate into surrounding healthy tissue and can therefore promote the spread of cancer.
In their experiments the scientists cultivated four different breast cancer cell cultures and a normal cell culture from mammary gland mucosa on thin membranes. They used variously agressive lines of breast cancer, to which they applied light pressure such as can occur within a tumor. The pressure enhanced the migration of the three most agressive cell lines in that they developed highly mobile migration forms of cancer cells that extended filopodia at the leading edge of the cell sheet and penetrated previously cell-free areas of the culture. These “leader cells” defined the direction of proliferation for the other cancer cells.
The scientists hope that their findings can be used for inhibiting the development of migration forms of cancer cells and thus counteract the spread of breast cancer.
The results have been published in the Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
(PNAS 2011; doi: 10.1073/pnas.1118910109).
Sources:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/12/27/1118910109.full.pdf+html
http://www.scinexx.de/newsletter-wissen-aktuell-14273-2012-01-02.html
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