Cancers pretend to be ‘super fit’ to steal nutrients from cells, study finds

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Some cancer cells pretend to be “super fit” to fool healthy cells into giving them their nutrients – allowing them to invade the body, researchers have found.

Scientists hope that having a better understanding of this process will lead to new ways of treating cancer, and ways to stop it becoming resistant to treatment so people can live well for longer.

So-called cheating cancer cells develop the ability to hijack the body’s natural cell competition process, a team from the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), London, found.

This process ensures that cells which are not good enough do not build up but instead are killed and removed.

Lead study author Pascal Meier, Professor of Cell Death and Immunity at the ICR, said: “By better understanding cell competition and how cancer hijacks it, we hope to ultimately design new therapeutic approaches to treat cancer and stop it becoming resistant to treatment so people can live well for longer, even with advanced disease.”

He added: “While cell competition generally serves as a quality control mechanism, this process can be hijacked by cheating cancer cells, which can pretend to be super-fit by secreting higher levels of extracellular glutamate.

“This causes the normal healthy cells surrounding the cancer cells to be deemed to be less fit and they start to donate their nutrients to their cancer neighbours.

“This effectively makes the cancer cells super fit and allows them to expand and spread at the expense of surrounding normal tissue.”

In the new study, the researchers discovered that differing levels of a crucial building block and messenger molecule (extracellular glutamate) in the body, regulates competition between cells.

Cells that produce lower levels of this molecule are earmarked as losers when surrounded by normal healthy cells, the study found.

When this happens, the loser cell starts to donate its nutrients to its fitter neighbours.

In doing this, it actively contributes to the growth of the winner cells, essentially sacrificing itself.

The researchers found that the process can be exploited by cancer cells, which cheat the system by pretending to be super-fit and increasing their production of this molecule.

This can also lead to some cancer cells developing resistance to chemotherapy or other targeted therapies, researchers say.

These resistant cells survive and multiply, making treatment less effective.

Ben Atkinson, head of research communications at Breast Cancer Now, which funded the study, said: “While more research is needed to see how these findings could help develop new treatments for people with breast cancer, this exciting study deepens our understanding of cell competition and its role in cancer spread and survival.”

The findings are published in the journal Developmental Cell.