healthy cells influence on cancerous cells

Cancers First Step
http://the-scientist.com/2012/02/08/cancers-first-step/


Now researchers have presented one model of how the local [cellular] environment regulates and prevents the expansion of a single mutant cell into a tumor.

The finding, published this week in Nature, confirms past studies that show cancer is not simply a product of the buildup of DNA mutations in a cell, but rather is dependent on the architecture of a cell’s local environment.

Joan Brugge of the Harvard Medical School said "We found that a majority of the oncogenes [cancer producing genes] were unable to proliferate as single cells in the context of a normal, growth-arrested structure"

[The single cancer cells could not replicate themselves as long as they were surrounded by healthy cells. Only when they were able to move to unrestricted space were they able to replicate.]

They also found that simply by weakening cell-cell connections in the tissue, mutants expressing other oncogenes that were previously benign, including activated AKT1, were able to move into the lumen [cavity or channel within a tube] and proliferate. “The geography of a mutant cell’s neighbors is affecting whether the mutant cell moves to a different part of the tissue,” says Brash.
Tweet