So, it’s encouraging that researchers at Penn State have now discovered how breast cancer cells are able to invade healthy tissue elsewhere in the body.
This discovery could be a potential game-changer in breast cancer treatment.
“Cell paralysis” signals a paradigm shift
Researchers have discovered how a protein called dynein helps control the movement of cancer cells through the body’s tissues.
Using a model that mimics a breast tumor, the researchers discovered that dynein is essential for the spread of cells into healthy tissue.
Dynein is simply the master key to cancer cell movement.
This means that it may be possible to stop metastases if we can find a way to control the protein’s path through the body.
“This discovery signals a paradigm shift in several respects. Until recently, we did not know that dynein was essential for the ability of cancer cells to move through the body. But,” said Erdem Tabadanov, assistant professor of pharmacology at Penn State and one of the study’s lead authors. “If we can target dynein, we can stop these cells from moving, and thus spreading.”
According to the researchers, it is very realistic that dynein is blocked so that cancer cells cannot move properly into healthy tissue.
Therefore, this breakthrough offers promising prospects for treatments that could be better than the cancer treatments we know now.
“Instead of killing cancer cells with radiation or chemotherapy, you can also paralyze them. It’s an advantage if you don’t have to kill the cells, because this is a harsh technique that affects both cancer cells and healthy cells. You just have to make the cancer cells stop moving,” says Tabadanov.
to The researchers noted And a clinical cure is still a long way off, because they have not yet conducted any tests on humans or animals.
