Researchers may have figured out how cancer spreads

Researchers may have figured out how cancer spreads

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11 November 2022

Studies on the development of anti-cancer treatments have provided great solutions over the years and many forms of cancer can be cured if there is a correct and early diagnosis. Nevertheless, one of the biggest and unsolved problems still remains the unpredictability of metastases.

New research from the Cancer Research Center at the University of Cambridge (CRUK) may be a game-changer, as researchers have discovered that by blocking the activity of specific proteins, they could trigger the metastasis of cancer cells in mice.

Specifically, the NALCN protein appears to stop the transfer of healthy cells to other parts of the body. When they removed it they noticed that healthy cells migrated from the pancreas to the kidneys and turned into healthy kidney cells. Thanks to this discovery, researchers believe that cancer cell metastasis may not be an abnormal process associated only with cancer after all.

This is a truly great discovery that sheds more light on the processes of metastasis and will potentially unlock new treatment methods, even at an experimental level.

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