A cancer breakthrough can offer an essential new way to stop the disease before it can spread.
Scientists have discovered that aggressive breast tumors look different – with many spikes that come out, rather as a cup.
Less aggressive breast tumors look more like a simple circle with barely spikes.
It is these spikes on the outside of tumors that experts now believe that breast cancer cells travel to other organs, such as the lungs, liver and brain – so that a patient is told that their cancer has spread and is now terminal.
The spikes can be like roads leading from the tumor that can flash cancer cells as a 'short -lived' to reach blood vessels before they spread through the body.
The breakthrough, which can lead to new medicines to prevent the spread of cancer, comes from analysis of tumors taken from 30 breast cancer patients and 65 people with melanoma (Subs – must be notified of melanoma).
Professor Victoria Sanz Moreno, senior author of the research, of the Institute of Cancer Research, London, who led the study, said: 'If we can see these spiky tumors in people's biopsy, we can focus their cancer cells with existing medicines, help prevent cancer from spreading.
'This can be part of a treatment plan, together with other medicines and chemotherapy, which can improve survival. We can also delay the spread in people with terminal cancer. '
Scientists have discovered that aggressive breast tumors look different – with many spikes that come out, preferably like a cup
A doctor examines a mammogram experts hope that this new finding can help prevent breast cancer from being distributed to vital organs
Tumors with many outer spikes – which are made of fibers in the 'extracellular matrix' around the tumor (subs – must keep) – it turned out to change how cancer cells behave.
Cancer cells within these spikes became rounder and more difficult – perfect for traveling through the body.
Scientists could prove that cancer cells such as these, created in the lab with the help of Spike-like structures, were better able to spread in the lungs of mice.
When they searched for similar cancer cells in people with different types of cancer, including breast cancer, pancreatic cancer and melanoma, the cancer patients who had these cells did not survive that long.
Those people who died faster had cancer cells with a more active set of genes that regulate their cell shape and size (subs.).
It is the peaks on tumors that seem to activate this gene activity.
This knowledge can be very useful, because there are already medicines available that can prevent gene activity and kill the cells.
Cancer starts with a tumor, and when that tumor is removed by surgery or reduced using treatments such as chemotherapy, someone no longer has cancer.
But if the cancer is caught too late, or the operation or treatment does not work perfectly, cells can escape from the tumor and ensure that the cancer spreads.
A 3D illustration of a cancer cell
It is hoped that the breakthrough will see new drugs for breast cancer develop
Although they can travel through fatty tissue or lymph nodes to spread, the most efficient way is that cancer cells enter the bloodstream, which offers a super height to reach organs such as the lungs or brains.
The spikes on tumors can link to blood vessels, which means that a fast, straight short short -flown in the bloodstream.
But scientists do not know if that is the case, because the tumors they analyzed were removed from people's bodies.
Regardless of whether they actually wear cancer cells to blood vessels, the spikes cancer cells seem to give the tools they need to travel around the body faster.
The genes of the cells that contain the 'instructions' for their shape seem to be 'being chosen' as a dimmer switch to change their shape faster than normal.
As soon as they are rounder, it shows that cancer cells can move faster and have harder exteriurs, so that they can press through blood vessels without too much damage.
The findings can help doctors to detect aggressive tumors, based on the spiky collagen 'scaffolding' around them.
And it can help with developing medicines that prevent tumors from becoming spiky – so that cancer cells prepare to spread.
If the cells are not spreading and stored in the tumor, other medicines can successfully destroy them there.
The breakthrough, described in the journal Nature Communications, is the highlight of almost a decade of research.
Dr. Oscar Maiques, who led the study of Barts Cancer Institute at Queen Mary University of London, said: 'When clinicians biopsy the tumor, our research shows that what is on the outside of the tumor is just as important as what is in the middle is – if this contains crucial information about whether a cancer will probably spread. '
