Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation

Don X. Nguyen, PhD (Damon Runyon Fellow ‘05-‘08) and colleagues in the lab of Joan Massagué, PhD (Former Fellowship Award Committee), at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, identified a new process termed “tumor self-seeding” by which aggressive circulating tumor cells (CTCs) return to recolonize their tumors of origin.  The researchers found that self-seeding can accelerate tumor growth and angiogenesis through activation of cytokines IL-6 and IL-8, which attract the most aggressive CTCs back to the original tumor, and factors FSCN1 and MMP1, which mediate the physical infiltration of CTCs into a tumor.  These findings may lead to new targeted therapies that interfere with the self-seeding process and thus slow or prevent tumor progression.  This study was published in the journal Cell.

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