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Is it possible to beat metastasis?
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
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Cancer is a terrible disease, but with the appearance of metastases it is immediately classified as incurable.
In order to increase the survival rate of patients and combat cancer metastases, scientists decided to study in detail the formation of secondary tumors. They had to answer the following questions: how do cancer cells spread and "germinate"? How can this process be blocked?
Professor Christine Chaffer and others at Australia's Garvan Institute for Medical Research have discovered that mother tumours have the potential to inhibit the growth of metastatic tumours. This is a unique natural mechanism that allows cancer to stop itself from growing. But could it be used to create new therapeutic methods?
In the course of studying the processes of formation and spread of metastases, scientists have found a suspicious ecosystem that plays a role in the development of oncopathology. Studies conducted on rodents have shown that maternal breast tumors are capable of blocking metastatic cells using indirect chemical signals. To conduct such signals, the main tumor uses its own immune system, directing the body's leukocytes to attack the metastases, preventing their growth.
"Under the influence of immunity, daughter cells remain in a 'frozen' state, and the metastatic tumor stops growing. We are amazed that mother tumors are able to block their own spread," the researchers say.
Despite the fact that the described processes were observed in studies of rodents, scientists are confident that there is every reason to believe that a similar mechanism for suppressing the development of metastases is also present in the human body.
Experts cannot yet identify and define all the stages of the discovered mechanism. However, some signals that the tumor uses to stimulate immunity are already known. Scientists still have a lot of research to do in order to transform these signals into a therapeutic drug for cancer metastases.
"We can already speak of a rare success: we have been given a direction that will suggest a way to treat metastatic cancer. At the moment, our goal is to reproduce this natural process of suppression of daughter cells in the conditions of medical practice. We must understand and take into account all the moments that occur when immunocytes are stimulated by a tumor," explains Professor Chaffer.
If the project is successful, many malignant processes will no longer be perceived by doctors and patients as a death sentence. According to some statistics, about 0.02% of the broken-off daughter cells are capable of forming secondary neoplasms: now specialists have a very real opportunity to zero out this indicator.
The results of the research by Australian scientists can be found in the publication Nature Cell Biology.
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