14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) say that the spread of cancer cells through the body is dependent on the direction in which fluids flow in the areas around tumors.
What makes cancer so dangerous is the fact that cells can break off tumors, and start dispersing themselves through the body. They can then take root in other organs, at which point the disease become untreatable, and the patient condemned.
This is called metastasis. Scientists have been fighting against it for a long time, and the new research was the latest in a string of effort meant to determine exactly how the cancer becomes generalized.
In order to assess this, the MIT group created a new microfluidic device, which they used to analyze the movements of cancer cells. These cells are known for using the blood stream as a means of transport, but they also have to navigate other spaces in the body.
While studying tumor cells inside the lab-on-a-chip device, scientists determined that the direction in which fluids flow in a particular area of the body is directly linked to the chances tumor cells have of propagating to other locations successfully.
With the new data, experts can hope to develop new approaches meant to limit the spread of cancer in diagnosed patients. The study was conducted by MIT professor Roger Kamm and mechanical engineering graduate student William Polacheck.
They worked closely together with Charles Stark Draper Laboratory expert Joseph Charest for the research. The technique is described in a recent issue of the esteemed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
“There isn't a single drug currently on the market that addresses how cancer cells break loose from a primary tumor and get into the vascular system, migrate out, and form a secondary tumor,” says Kamm, the MIT Cecil and Ida Green distinguished professor of biological and mechanical engineering.
“But those are processes that we can actually simulate in our microfluidic system,” he goes on to say. These results were made possible by the special, 3D microfluidic chip that the experts developed.
One of the most important discoveries made was that cancer cells can also move upstream in a fluid, a result that contradicts past studies on the matter. Two competing mechanisms were found to be responsible for this ability.
The trend to migrate downstream is produced by a process called autologous chemotaxis, and appears when certain receptors on the downstream side of the cell are activated. However, at times, another class of receptors on the upper side can be activated, resulting in upstream motions.
“Acting on this might significantly improve cancer survival rates. Pharmaceutical companies can use this information to focus on creating drugs that would block the CCR7 receptor to prevent migration toward the vascular system, and confine the tumors,” Kamm says.