(Press-News.org) A mechanism that cells use to group together and move around the body – called 'chase and run' - has been described for the first time by scientists at UCL.
Published in Nature Cell Biology, the new study focuses on the process that occurs when cancer cells interact with healthy cells in order to migrate around the body during metastasis. Scientists know that cancer cells recruit healthy cells and use them to travel long distances, but how this process takes place and how it could be controlled to design new therapies against cancer remains unknown.
Now, using embryonic cells called 'neural crest cells' (which are similar to cancer cells in term of their invasive behaviour) and placode cells which are the precursors for cranial nerves (the equivalent to healthy cells) researchers at UCL have started to unravel this process.
They have found that when neural crest cells are put next to placode cells they undergo a dramatic transformation and start 'chasing' the placode cells. At the same time placode cells exhibite 'escape' behaviour when contacted by neural crest cells. The chasing behavior depends on the production of small chemical molecules by the placode cells that attracts neural crest cells toward them.
The authors of the study are confident that the process whereby cancer cells attached to healthy cells in order to migrate around the body is comparable. Healthy cells of the body try to escape from tumor cells, but are followed by malignant cells because the healthy cells produce an attractant for the cancer cells.
Dr Roberto Mayor, UCL Department of Cell and Developmental Biology and lead author of the research, said, "We use the analogy of the donkey and the carrot to explain this behaviour: the donkey follows the carrot, but the carrot moves away when approached by the donkey. Similarly the neural crest cells follow the placode cells, but placode cells move away when touched by neural crest cells."
"The findings suggest an alternative way in which cancer treatments might work in the future if therapies can be targeted at the process of interaction between malignant and healthy cells to stop cancer cells from spreading and causing secondary tumours."
"Most cancer deaths are not due to the formation of the primary tumor, instead people die from secondary tumors originating from the first malignant cells, which are able to travel and colonize vital organs of the body such as the lungs or the brain."
###
The work was funded by the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust.
Notes for Editors
1. For more information or to interview Dr Roberto Mayor, please contact Clare Ryan in the UCL Media Relations Office on tel: +44 (0)20 7679 9726, mobile: +44 07747 565 056, out of hours +44 (0)7917 271 364, e-mail: clare.ryan@ucl.ac.uk.
2. 'Chase-and-run between adjacent cell populations promotes directional collective migration' is published in the journal Nature Cell Biology. Journalists can obtain copies of the paper by contacting UCL Media Relations.
3. Images of the neural crest cells are also available to journalists by contacting UCL Media Relations.
About UCL (University College London)
Founded in 1826, UCL was the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine.
We are among the world's top universities, as reflected by our performance in a range of international rankings and tables. According to the Thomson Scientific Citation Index, UCL is the second most highly cited European university and the 15th most highly cited in the world.
UCL has nearly 25,000 students from 150 countries and more than 9,000 employees, of whom one third are from outside the UK. The university is based in Bloomsbury in the heart of London, but also has two international campuses – UCL Australia and UCL Qatar. Our annual income is more than £800 million.
http://www.ucl.ac.uk | Follow us on Twitter @uclnews | Watch our YouTube channel YouTube.com/UCLTV
'Chase and run' cell movement mechanism explains process of metastasis
2013-06-17
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Advances in genetic sequencing diagnose Paralympic hopeful's rare condition
2013-06-17
National Paracycling Champion Tom Staniford has an extremely rare condition which, until now, has puzzled his doctors. He is unable to store fat under his skin – yet has type 2 diabetes – and suffered hearing loss as a child. Now, thanks to advances in genome sequencing, an international research team led by the University of Exeter Medical School has identified Tom's condition and pinpointed the single genetic mutation that causes it.
As well as allowing a better understanding of Tom's condition, the discovery may have implications for his bid to participate in the ...
Noble gases hitch a ride on hydrous minerals
2013-06-17
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The noble gases get their collective moniker from their tendency toward snobbishness. The six elements in the family, which includes helium and neon, don't normally bond with other elements and they don't dissolve into minerals the way other gases do. But now, geochemists from Brown University have found a mineral structure with which the nobles deign to fraternize.
Researchers led by Colin Jackson, a graduate student in geological sciences, have found noble gases to be highly soluble in amphibole, a mineral commonly found in oceanic ...
IU chemists produce star-shaped macromolecule that grabs large anions
2013-06-17
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Chemists at Indiana University Bloomington have created a symmetrical, five-sided macrocycle that is easy to synthesize and has characteristics that may help expand the molecular tool box available to researchers in biology, chemistry and materials sciences.
The molecule, which the researchers call cyanostar, was developed in the lab of Amar Flood, associate professor in the Department of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences. It is described in an article in the journal Nature Chemistry, scheduled for publication in August and available online.
Doctoral ...
Global cooling as significant as global warming
2013-06-17
A "cold snap" 116 million years ago triggered a similar marine ecosystem crisis to those witnessed in the past as a result of global warming, according to research published today in Nature Geoscience.
The international study involving experts from the universities of Newcastle, UK, Cologne, Frankfurt and GEOMAR-Kiel, confirms the link between global cooling and a crash in the marine ecosystem during the mid-Cretaceous greenhouse period. It also quantifies for the first time the amplitude and duration of the temperature change.
Analysing the geochemistry and micropaleontology ...
HIV prevention among female sex workers in India reduces HIV and syphilis
2013-06-17
HIV prevention programs for female sex workers in India reduce rates of syphilis, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), a University of Toronto study has found.
About two million Indians are infected with HIV, mostly in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. The study, led by Professor Prabhat Jha from U of T's Dalla Lana School of Public Health and St. Michael's Hospital's Centre for Global Health Research (CGHR), examined the impact of prevention among female sex workers whose contact with male clients contributes ...
Mapping translation sites in the human genome
2013-06-17
Because of their central importance to biology, proteins have been the focus of intense research, particularly the manner in which they are produced from genetically coded templates—a process commonly known as translation. While the general mechanism of translation has been understood for some time, protein synthesis can initiate by more than one mechanism. One of the least well understood mechanisms is known as cap-independent translation.
Now, John Chaput and his colleagues at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute have produced the first genome-wide investigation ...
Diabetics who use meters to monitor their glucose have better control over disease
2013-06-17
New York– Researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai will present several new studies at ENDO 2013, The Endocrine Society's Annual Meeting & Expo (ENDO) from June 15-18 in San Francisco.
Mount Sinai researchers will demonstrate new data on diabetes self-management, as well as the role of prostastic acid phosphatase (PAP) in Prostate Cancer (PCa) bone metastases; identify new molecules that can stimulate the thyroid gland; reveal the prevalence of primary aldosteronism (PA) in an urban population; and show how thyroid autoimmunity may be triggered ...
Sibling aggression, often dismissed, linked to poor mental health
2013-06-17
DURHAM, N.H. – "It's not fair!" " "You're not the boss of me." "She hit me!" "He started it."
Fights between siblings – from toy-snatching to clandestine whacks to being banished from the bedroom – are so common they're often dismissed as simply part of growing up. Yet a new study from researchers at the University of New Hampshire finds that sibling aggression is associated with significantly worse mental health in children and adolescents. In some cases, effects of sibling aggression on mental health were the same as those of peer aggression.
"Even kids who reported ...
Study finds racial and ethnic disparities in usage of specialty services for children with autism
2013-06-17
A study from investigators at MassGeneral Hospital for Children (MGHfC) found that African-American or Hispanic children diagnosed with autism were significantly less likely than white children to have received subspecialty care or procedures related to conditions that often accompany autism spectrum disorders. While previous studies have documented that minority children with autism tend to be diagnosed at a later age than white children, this report – which will appear in the July issue of Pediatrics and has been released online – is the first to describe disparities ...
A robot that runs like a cat
2013-06-17
Even though it doesn't have a head, you can still tell what kind of animal it is: the robot is definitely modeled upon a cat. Developed by EPFL's Biorobotics Laboratory (Biorob), the "cheetah-cub robot," a small-size quadruped prototype robot, is described in an article appearing today in the International Journal of Robotics Research. The purpose of the platform is to encourage research in biomechanics; its particularity is the design of its legs, which make it very fast and stable. Robots developed from this concept could eventually be used in search and rescue missions ...