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Posted on Jun 13, 2005, 6 a.m.
By Bill Freeman
Like a siren song, breast cancer secretes growth factors to attract stem cells then uses those cells - which normally promote healing - to help it survive, researchers have found.
Like a siren song, breast cancer secretes growth factors to attract stem cells then uses those cells - which normally promote healing - to help it survive, researchers have found.
In the laboratory, the researchers have documented secretion of growth factors FGF2 and VEGF by breast cancer cells, seen these factors bind to receptors on stem cells then watched stem cells migrate toward the cancer. When they took the growth factors away, the deadly migration decreased.
"These stem cells are there to make normal tissue; they make fat, cartilage, bone," says Dr. Adam Perry, general surgery resident at the Medical College of Georgia. "But if you have a tumor, it will in a sense mimic some tissue type to get the cells to come and help form the environment that is called the tumor stroma that it needs to get beyond a certain size. That's really when cancer becomes clinically problematic."
Knowing how tumors attract the stem cells they need to thrive opens up new avenues for earlier detection, better staging and more targeted therapies, he says.
Dr. Perry's work on this fatal attraction between cancer and adult bone marrow stem cells earned him the Peter J. Gingrass, M.D. Memorial Award for the best paper presented by a medical student or non-plastic surgery resident during the recent 50th anniversary meeting of the Plastic Surgery Research Council.
"When you have a growing tumor, the tumor cells cannot stand alone," says Dr. Edmond Ritter, MCG plastic surgeon and senior co-investigator. "Tumors have specific colon cancer or breast cancer or melanoma cells, but they also have to have supporting framework which includes fibroblasts as well as blood vessels."
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In the laboratory, the researchers have documented secretion of growth factors FGF2 and VEGF by breast cancer cells, seen these factors bind to receptors on stem cells then watched stem cells migrate toward the cancer. When they took the growth factors away, the deadly migration decreased.
"These stem cells are there to make normal tissue; they make fat, cartilage, bone," says Dr. Adam Perry, general surgery resident at the Medical College of Georgia. "But if you have a tumor, it will in a sense mimic some tissue type to get the cells to come and help form the environment that is called the tumor stroma that it needs to get beyond a certain size. That's really when cancer becomes clinically problematic."
Knowing how tumors attract the stem cells they need to thrive opens up new avenues for earlier detection, better staging and more targeted therapies, he says.
Dr. Perry's work on this fatal attraction between cancer and adult bone marrow stem cells earned him the Peter J. Gingrass, M.D. Memorial Award for the best paper presented by a medical student or non-plastic surgery resident during the recent 50th anniversary meeting of the Plastic Surgery Research Council.
"When you have a growing tumor, the tumor cells cannot stand alone," says Dr. Edmond Ritter, MCG plastic surgeon and senior co-investigator. "Tumors have specific colon cancer or breast cancer or melanoma cells, but they also have to have supporting framework which includes fibroblasts as well as blood vessels."
Read Full Story
