How Cancer Sneaks About Inside Us
Cancer requires "traction" to metastasize - learn some "ins" & "outs"
How cancer invades the body
Cancer is when cells become so disorderly they have a mind of their own and no longer die. Immortal cells that invade, or travel throughout our body and invade distant tissues, can thus... kill us.
So how do they do this?
One, we have a grand dam of tumor surveillance called the P53 tumor suppressor gene. This is rebooted by the “final metabolite” of estrogen, in both genders.
This "tumor suppressor gene" keeps watch. This can go silent or be damaged by endocrine disrupting compounds(EDCs). Especially in the womb.
I am a DES daughter. My mother was exposed to the most powerful cancer-causing drug ever invented (diethylstilbesterol or DES) while pregnant with me (as were millions of other pregnant women from 1938 to 1971, when it banned as a Class 1 Carcinogen).
I had many cancers due the the fact my P53 was epigenetically altered in the womb.
If we don't “methylate” properly, we may have problems with production of this molecule, that "watches" our cancer backs.
Thus, healthy methylation is needed to produce this P53 protective gene protein.
There is also the "local environment" of our own cells. Are they "hospitable" to cancer cells to allow and nudge them to travel and take root... or not?
This depends on many factors, such as how much excessive inflammation or how much of an inviting environment do our tissues make for these unruly and potentially lethal cancer cells?
Cancer cells do not move randomly. Isn’t this fascinating?
Cancer cells gravitate toward environments that allow them "traction" to keep moving and keep invading.
STUDY GIVES INSIGHT INTO HOW CANCER SPREADS
An international team of researchers led by University of Minnesota Twin Cities engineers have found that cancer cells can gravitate toward certain mechanical "sweet spot" environments, providing new insights into how cancer "invades" the body.
These same scientists from the University of Minnesota-led team had previously found that cells have the ability to sense the "stiffness" of their environment -- which ranges from stiff (bone tissue) to soft (fatty tissue) to medium stiffness (muscle tissue) -- and their ability to move is dependent upon that environment.
Their research showed that the cells can have a "sweet spot" of stiffness, that isn't too hard or too soft, in which they have better "traction" and can move faster.
In this study, the researchers found that not only does the stiffness of the environment impact the "speed" at which cells move, but it also affects the "direction" in which they move.
For many years, scientists have thought that cells would always gravitate toward a stiffer environment. As if it were more unhealthy.
But the University of Minnesota researchers observed for the first time that cells can actually move toward a "sweet spot" that's more in the middle.
Don’t we all love “sweet spots” darn it.
The research team also found that some cells, like the breast cancer cells they studied, have a "feedback mechanism" that causes them to grip more strongly onto stiffer environments, which explains why many previous studies showed cells moving to the stiffer side.
However, if you turn that mechanism off genetically, the cells will then gravitate more toward the middle. Toward that sweet spot.
Cancer cells actually have particular ways in which they like to move. Searching out these “physiologic sweet spots”.