The Study:

The Question

Cancer cells move. That’s an obvious statement, after all, tumors grow and metastasize around the body. But how do they move? Do they follow specific paths or just go around randomly?

Understanding how cancer migrates can lead to new therapies targeting these mechanisms. If we know how it moves through the body, we can potentially stop it from doing so.

In this week’s study, the authors found that cells called Cancer-Associated Fibroblasts (or CAFs for short) lay down tracks that cancer cells use to navigate.

The Answer

It’s been known for a while that CAFs put down tracks near cancers, but how these tracks influence the cells around them hasn’t been well studied.

In the image below, a CAF from a colon cancer patient migrates across a glass slide and leaves tracks behind it. These tracks remained stable for days (the authors looked out until day 3).

After characterizing the proteins present in the tracks left by the colon CAFs, the scientists wanted to see how cancer cells would interact with them. They let the colon CAFS put down tracks for 24 hours and then added cancer cells on top of them.

Without the tracks, the cancer cells didn’t stick to the glass slides well. On the left side of the image below, you can see the cancer cells lining up along the tracks but not in the empty space around them. On the right side of the image, a cancer cell migrates along the tracks left by the CAFs.

The authors compared the ability of cancer cells to stick to other proteins, like collagen, and found that the tracks provided better adherence. Altogether, this data shows that the tracks are a powerful driver of cancer cell migration and strongly influence where they go.

The authors dug a little deeper and explored the specific structures involved in making cancer cells move along the CAF tracks. They found that several specific proteins let the cancer cells interact with the tracks (see first image/schematic). Removing these key proteins from the tracks prevented the cancer cells from attaching to them, leading to a reduction in movement.

Tracks left behind by CAFs are one of many ways that cancer cells move around their environments. Drugs that target the key proteins involved in CAF track migration could disrupt cancer movement, potentially leading to less aggressive tumors and better outcomes.

Every new cancer mechanism is another target for a new therapy!

See you next week for more science,

Neil

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