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Metabolic signal curbs cancer-cell migration

Metastasis, the migration of tumour cells from their primary site, is associated with poor prognosis. A molecule made during cell metabolism limits metastasis, revealing that this metabolite restrains cancer progression.
  1. Lydia W. S. Finley

    1. Lydia W. S. Finley is in the Cell Biology Program, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York 10065, USA.

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Cancer becomes lethal when tumour cells spread from their primary site in the body to invade distant organs — a process termed metastasis. For this complex event to occur, the cells must invade their surrounding tissue, enter the bloodstream and colonize another location, where secondary tumours called metastases form. Several of the early steps in metastasis, including cell migration, can be induced by the abnormal activation of a normal developmental program called epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT), in which the epithelial cells that line body surfaces take on the characteristics of mesenchymal cells, which have migratory properties1. Writing in Nature, Wang et al.2 identify a previously unknown mechanism by which a molecule generated in cellular metabolism inhibits the induction of EMT and thereby restrains the metastasis of lung cancer in mice.

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Nature 571, 39-40 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01934-9

References

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