With your support, researchers in Finland have developed a powerful new tool that helps them to look deep inside cancer cells as they move. Their exciting invention, named after an old Finnish fairy tale about rainbows, is revealing vital new insights into how breast cancer cells move as they spread, and how we can stop them.
We are deeply grateful to all the Curestarters who have generously supported Worldwide Cancer Research. Without your donations, our important research into breast cancer would not be possible. Thank you for helping us make a stand against such a devastating disease.
Secondary breast cancer urgently needs new cures
Around 60,000 people in the UK are currently living with secondary breast cancer - meaning the disease has spread to other parts of the body. Unfortunately once breast cancer spreads, it becomes much harder to treat, and while it can often be managed, there is still no cure.
For cancer to spread, cancer cells must physically move - how?
We know that vast networks of molecular signals help to coordinate this cell movement, and that visualising these networks would look a bit like a fireworks show, with different molecules activating and deactivating across the cell. But the exact molecules involved, and how they interact in real time, are still a mystery.
Any new information discovered could lead to a new treatment, which is why Professor Johanna Ivaska and her team set out to find a new way to watch some of these processes unfold live, inside cancer cells.
The team developed a special molecular tool which mimics a particular molecule called ITGB1. ITGB1 is involved in cancer cell movement, and is thought to help cancer cells spread.
Using a fluorescent probe, the tool glows in different colours depending on whether ITGB1 is active or inactive inside the cell. This allows researchers to track the molecule as the cell moves and find out how ITGB1 can influence cancer cell movement.
A colourful discovery:
The team named the tool 'Illusia', after a Finnish fairy-tale character who travels to Earth on a rainbow, a fitting name for a technology that reveals beautiful hidden patterns inside a cell.
And, like a good fairy, Illusia has helped the team map out how ITGB1 and its connected molecules behave, and they now understand much more about how ITGB1 activation is involved in cancer cell movement - and how it is linked to cancer progression.
What could this breakthrough mean for cancer patients?
Importantly, the team also discovered other key molecules that may play a role in cancer spread by regulating ITGB1 activation. Together, these findings have uncovered several new research leads, and they provide important pieces to the puzzle of how cancer spreads, and how we might be able to target cancer spread with new treatments.
Excitingly, the team have already been able to use their new findings to identify several drugs in clinical trials for other cancers that might also be effective in blocking breast cancer spread. They are now exploring these clues, and taking vital next steps in the search for new cures.
Ultimately, Professor Ivaska and her team hope their work will help to bring about new, targeted cancer treatments. Not just for patients with secondary breast cancer, but to patients with other types of hard-to-treat cancer too.
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