British scientists have another viewpoint on cancer metastasis

Cancer metastasis is the process of cancer cells separating themselves from primary tumor and spreading to other parts of the body through the blood or lymphatic system. Once the cancer spreads, the treatment becomes more challenging. Chemotherapy, hormone therapy, radiation therapy and other therapies like recombinant human proteins can be successful in the treatment of some metastatic cancers, but for most metastatic cancers, the prognosis is poor.

Recently, early study of UK Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) found that cancer cells seem to depend on an unusual survival mechanism to spread throughout the body. This discovery could help to find a prevention and treatment method of metastasizing and secondary tumors in the future. The study is published in the journal Nature Communications. The researchers used mice and zebrafish to conduct research and tested the changes that occurred when cancer cells broke away from a tumor cell cluster. Researchers revealed an unknown survival mechanism of cancer cells in the past and found that a molecule called "integrins" may be the key through experiments using recombinant mouse proteins.

Integrins are proteins on the surface of cells, and they act with surrounding environment around the cells. Integrins are involved in "outside-in" and "inside-out" signaling and can help cancer cells be adhered to the surrounding environment. But the study found that when cancer metastasizes, integrins change to a new form of communication from adhesion function which is a signal "from within the inside". The integrins send signals within cells, which has never been found before.

The researchers found that an integrin called β1and another protein called c-Met paired up and went into the interior of the cell together with each other. These two proteins would enter in a specific site in the cell, and the role of this site is to degrade and recover cellular components. But in this case, the site is used for cell communication. These two proteins would send signals to other regions of the cell and trigger defense mechanisms of cell death in the transfer process.

Integrin inhibitor has been tested as a method for the treatment of cancer. Currently, the drug can targetedly act on the activity of integrin signaling on the surface of cancer cells. The researchers said this may explain why the efficacy of these drugs is so poor. A new strategy is to block integrin proteins from entering the cell. The researchers hope this viewpoint can help to design better treatments for cancer metastasis. Flarebio offers recombinant proteins of good quality including recombinant Nrg2 at reasonable prices.