Our researchers in Italy have uncovered a new mechanism that helps breast cancer cells to survive the effects of treatment once they have spread to other parts of the body. By targeting these cells while they "sleep" or lay dormant, the researchers hope that they will be able to identify ways to stop people with breast cancer progressing to an advanced stage of the disease.
Our hope is that these findings can be translated into a real drug treatment that can be administered to patients to kill “sleeping” cancer cells before they awake into full-blown metastases. If the approach that we propose is feasible, this could prevent disease relapse and prolong survival of people with cancer.
What are sleeping cancer cells and why are they so dangerous?
In the last 40 years, breast cancer survival has improved dramatically thanks to research. However, for many patients there is a risk of the disease returning after successful treatment - and it is often more aggressive and harder to treat.
One reason for this is that some cancer cells escape the treatment and spread to different sites in the body. Once there, the cells can enter a 'sleep' state and remain dormant, until they wake up and cause the cancer to return.
These sleeping cancer cells are dangerous because they hide and go undetected, but act like a ticking time bomb ready to wake up and cause harm even years later. They are also difficult to treat because they lack many of the characteristics of cancer cells, so they can’t be killed by chemotherapy or other existing treatments.
How does tissue softness help cancer cells hide?
This problem of sleeping cancer cells lingering provides a key challenge that research needs to overcome if we are to develop effective treatments for all breast cancer patients.
Dr Sirio Dupont from the University of Padova in Italy and his team recently discovered that cancer cells migrate from the breast, which is made of more rigid tissue, to the tissues that are softer, such as lungs. It seems that the 'softness' of these tissues can help cancer cells survive in a sleeping dormant state.
When hedgehogs hibernate for winter they seek out a cosy, sheltered space. The same seems to go for sleeping cancer cells - certain environments in our tissues might be better suited to fostering these dangerous cells.
By understanding how the soft tissue of the lungs helps these sleeping cells survive, the team hoped to find new ways to target them so that cancer wouldn’t come back. And as they started looking more closely at why these soft tissues help the migratory cancer cells to survive, they uncovered a remarkable mechanism.
What could this mean for patients?
The team found that healthy cells in the softer tissues release more antioxidants (chemicals produced by the body that protect the organism from damage). Surprisingly, they found the increase in antioxidants creates a favourable environment for the arriving cancer cells, making them difficult to kill with chemotherapy.
The research team found that specific molecules, called DRP1 and NRF2, were responsible for triggering antioxidant release depending on how stiff or soft the tissue is. The researchers believe this finding suggests that blocking DRP1 and NRF2 could be a way to target dormant cancer cells that have spread, making them treatable with chemotherapy.
As a cancer research charity we are really excited by breast cancer breakthroughs like this because they mark the beginning of a journey towards new treatments that could stop the development of secondary or metastatic breast cancer. This stage of the disease is responsible for all the deaths from breast cancer so this research could help save the lives of many people in the future.
What is the difference between sleeping cancer cells and active cancer?
Active cancer cells are growing and dividing very quickly, which is how tumours develop. Sleeping cancer cells are not dividing so they are not currently growing into a tumour. However they still have other properties that make them dangerous and when sleeping cancer cells are awoken they can then cause cancer to come back.
How common are dormant cancer cells in breast cancer patients?
We do not fully understand sleeping, or dormant cancer cells or how prevalent they are. But we do know that breast cancer, as well as a lot of other cancer, do often come back even years after an initial diagnosis. Researchers believe that dormant cancer cells could be a major reason for this so they are working hard to understand more about how they work and hunting for ways to stop then re-awakening.
What’s next for research on sleeping cancer cells?
By discovering the mechanisms that cancer cells use to hide and the way that they wake-up again, researchers can identify potential ways to stop this process. In the future this will hopefully lead to treatments that could prevent breast cancer, and other cancers, returning.
Your sleeping cancer cell FAQs:
What are sleeping cancer cells?
Sleeping cancer cells, sometimes called dormant cancer cells, are cells that are able to survive in a hibernation state. They are dangerous because they can evade cancer treatment and stay asleep for years, only to wake up and cause cancer to come back.
How do sleeping cancer cells survive treatment?
Normally cancer cells divide and grow very quickly. Sleeping cancer cells are not dividing which means that they go undetected by chemotherapy which works by targeting quickly dividing cells. Sleeping cancer cells remain hidden, going under the radar of cancer treatments.
What causes cancer cells to become dormant?
Very little is understood about dormant cancer cells. Researchers are working hard to discover how they become sleepy, how they come out of hibernation and how we could potentially stop this process.
How long can cancer cells remain asleep in the body?
Unfortunately cancer cells can remain asleep in the body for many years, meaning that patients can sometimes think their cancer has gone only to find it comes back when these cells re-awaken. By understanding more about these sleepy dormant cells, researchers hope to find ways to stop cancer coming back.
What new breast cancer treatments are being researched in 2026?
Breast cancer survival rates have increased dramatically in the past few decades but it can still be hard to treat if it spreads to other parts of the body. Professor Zippo is exploring how breast cancer cells are able to survive when they spread to other organs. By finding out how cancer cells acquire the survival skills needed to thrive in other parts of the by body, he hopes to discover new ways to stop cancer spreading, making it easier to cure.
Some types of breast cancer are also harder to cure than others. Dr Klaus Pors and his team in the UK are working with researchers in South Africa to develop a new treatment for triple-negative breast cancer, a difficult to treat cancer that often comes back. Their international cancer research will bring hope to the thousands of people affected by this cancer worldwide every year.
Thanks to research like this there have been lots of recent breast cancer breakthroughs funded by Curestarters.
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