14 DAY TRIAL // Scientists at Ohio State University now claim that, according to their investigations, the spread of cancer is encouraged by a gene that is activated by stress.
This gene is known to the scientific community as ATF3.
By the looks of it, this gene negatively affects a person's immune system and makes it easier for cancer cells present in one part of the body to set up camp in other regions.
This process is dubbed metastasis.
According to Daily Mail, experiments have shown that, at least in the case of mice, cancer has a more difficult time spreading when its host does not express the ATF3 gene.
Whenever the ATF3 gene is expressed, cancer cells appear to have no issues migrating to other areas of the body.
“The cancer cells were always the same, but we had different hosts. The primary tumors were similar in size, but only in the host that can express ATF3 - the stress gene - did the cancer cells metastasize efficiently,” Professor Tsonwin Hai commented on these experiments.
The researchers hope that, by toying with this gene and silencing it, it might be possible to halt the spread of cancer.