Breast cancer: Tumor growth fueled by bone marrow cells
New research, published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, reveals a novel mechanism that fuels tumor growth in breast cancer and may have a negative impact on a person's outlook. However, the findings might also help scientists develop individually tailored treatments that target breast cancer tumors more precisely.
Neta Erez, a senior lecturer in the department of pathology at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University in Israel, is the first author of the new paper that details a novel tumor growth mechanism in breast cancer.
As the scientists note in their study, breast cancer is still "one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths in women in the Western world," despite the intense research efforts in the medical community and public awareness campaigns.
Indeed, in the United States, breast cancer remains the most common cause of cancer-related death among women of all races and ethnicities.
The new research by Prof. Erez and colleagues uncovers a mechanism that may explain why some people have poorer outlooks than others after receiving a cancer diagnosis. This mechanism, the authors explain, involves fibroblasts — cells that enable tumor growth, despite not being cancerous themselves.
In the case of breast cancer, these fibroblasts help cancer cells proliferate by driving inflammation and helping to form blood vessels that deliver oxygen- and nutrient-rich blood to the growing tumors.
Until now, scientists thought that most of these cells came just from the surrounding breast tissue, but the new research by Prof. Erez and her colleagues shows that many of these fibroblasts actually derive from bone marrow cells.
