Cambridge: In a new study, British scientists have discovered how healthy cells can cause cancer to spread to other parts of the body.
Scientists at the Cambridge Institute for Cancer Research UK discovered in the study that cancer cells hijack the processes of healthy cells to spread the disease throughout the body. This discovery has completely changed the way we think about cancer.
Metastasis is one of the leading causes of death in cancer patients, largely because researchers find it difficult to diagnose the early signs of the process.
In a recent study, researchers discovered a protein called NALCN that may play an important role in this process.
In experiments conducted on mice, the researchers found that NALCN increased the activity of the protein in the process of metastasis.
In the study, the researchers found that when they removed this protein from mice without cancer, doing so caused their healthy cells to leave their original tissue and these cells could migrate to other organs throughout the body. .
This suggests that metastasis is not an uncommon process limited to cancer as previously thought. Rather, it is a normal process that healthy cells use, and this process is used by cancer cells to spread to other parts of the body.
Professor Richard Gilbertson, director of Cancer Research UK’s Cambridge Institute and head of the research group, said the information was the most important to come out of his lab in three decades.
