Why does breast cancer metastasize?

An international team has identified a molecular mechanism that helps breast cancer recruit "allies" and expand in the body

(image: Getty Images) Tumors are not just masses of diseased cells. Some are able to originate real "ecosystems" (aberrant) within the body: they recruit other healthy cell types and push them to "help" them to grow, and sometimes even to spread and create secondary tumors. How do they do it? What are the mechanisms that allow malignant neoplasms to generate metastases? Today, thanks to the work of the team coordinated by Giannino Del Sal, head of the Cancer Cell signaling group at the Icgeb in Trieste and of the Ifom signaling, tumor microenvironment and metabolism program (Milan), we know a little more.

Studying breast cancer, researchers have discovered that it is all a matter of "communication": a particular micro-rna modifies the structure and function of the Golgi apparatus, the cellular organelle responsible for maturation, sorting and release of proteins towards the outside of the cell. Then the tumor cells that express it release into the tumor microenvironment elements that make up the extracellular matrix and signaling molecules that induce the cells of the healthy tissue that surrounds the tumor and blood vessels to help the tumor to grow, and even to exit its site. colonizing other parts of the body.

One of the most frequent mutations in tumors, including breast cancer, is that of the gene that codes for the protein p53, a transcription factor that regulates the cell cycle. Normally p53 suppresses the development of tumors, but if this control is changed, it is lost and things can go downhill.