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14 Feb, 2025
Tumours are held together by a structure called the extracellular matrix (ECM), which acts like the scaffolding around a building under construction.
A team led by Dr Oscar Maiques at Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London and Professor Victoria Sanz Moreno at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, discovered how cancer cells use the layout of this scaffolding structure as a roadmap to leave the tumour. They found that the ECM triggers changes within the cancer cells themselves altering their shape and boosting their ability to travel to different parts of the body.
This breakthrough, which is the culmination of almost a decade of research that began at King’s College London, means that aggressive tumours that are likely to metastasise can now more easily be identified at an earlier stage allowing clinicians to tailor treatment sooner. Drugs are currently in development to target the ECM’s layout, as well as the genes that drive these cell shape changes which could stop cancer in its tracks before it can escape the tumour and spread.
The team, funded by Cancer Research UK and Barts Charity, looked at tumour tissue from 99 patients with melanoma skin cancer and breast cancer.
Staining from a human melanoma patient. Melanoma cells are highlighted in green. Individual cells are present in the invasion area, exhibiting an amoeboid/rounded shape near blood vessels.
Staining from a human melanoma patient. Melanoma cells are highlighted in green. Individual cells are present in the invasion area, exhibiting an amoeboid/rounded shape near blood vessels.
They saw that the ECM was laid out differently in three distinct areas of the tumour. Like scaffolding, the ECM is made up of a number of components, including pole-like fibres.At the centre of the tumour, the fibres were spread out and disorganised, whilst at the border they were tightly packed and thicker. At the outermost border of the tumour, the fibres were arranged pointing away from the tumour providing the tracks for the cancer cells to follow as they escape from the tumour. At this outermost border of the tumour, the cancer cells were rounded a more invasive cell shape.