Cells Responsible for Spread of Bladder Cancer Discovered
Researchers have discovered a set of powerful cells found in bladder tumors that are believed to be primarily important for the growth and spread of bladder cancer, through a technique which takes advantage of the similarities between tumor and organ growth. These new findings may help scientists in the development of new methods of finding and attacking similar types of cells in other types of cancer. Read more about Understanding Stem Cell Research
For a long time, scientists have believed that a subset of cells in the cancerous tumors act a lot like the developmentally primitive cells known as stem cells, which spur the development of organs early on in life and remain present in nearly all of the body’s organs in order to repair or replace injured or aging tissues. These cancerous cells and stem cells share various characteristics including a propensity to migrate through tissues as well as an unlimited lifespan. These are the same cell properties which make cancer particularly dangerous. Were it possible for researchers to identify and specifically target the cancer cells that exhibit these properties, they would be able to wipe out the entire population of cancer cells that sustain and allow tumors to grow.
Other research findings have identified the proteins on the surfaces of these cancer cells which could work as markers, but because cells sometimes share these same cell proteins, this approach could lead to errors.
The reasoning behind this research was that if the stem-like cancer cells behave like healthy stem cells, then they may be physically located in similar compartments into the tissues where the stem cells ordinarily are found. The researchers searched for cells with the same marker in sections from 55 human bladder tumors using a surface protein marker previously identified for the healthy bladder stem cells. The researchers then found that the cancer cells displaying the marker were localized in an area at the intersection of the 2 layers of cells known as epithelium and stroma. This is the place where the bladder stem cells are normally located.
The researchers then separated the cells displaying the stem cell marker from those without it and injected the two populations into different sets of mice, using the cancer cell lines grown from other bladder cancer patients. The mice which were injected with the cancer cells displaying the marker were found to always grow tumors, whereas those injected with the other cancer cells rarely did. This suggested that the stem-like cancer cells are able to create new tissue in the same way as stem cells do.
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