What is it that makes cancer cells migrate from the main site of growth to other healthy tissues and how exactly do they move? A professor of Biological Chemistry at Johns Hopkins called Denise Montell (along with her team) have just brought us one step closer to finding out, and made a nifty video in the process.
In a impressive display of patience, Dr Montell and her team spent a year feeding a cluster of fruit fly cells inside an egg chamber with different solutions, trying to find the right one that would make the cluster migrate from one side of the egg to the other. These fruit fly cells are not cancerous, but what they are doing resembles what the cancer cells do and how they move. However, you can't watch them moving inside the ovary but if you take them out of the ovary they refuse to budge. Hence the need for the ideal medium to get them going. When the team finally hit on the perfect formula, they made a video, and you can now watch that process of cell migration online. You can see from video that different cells seem to take the lead in propelling the cluster forward at any one time, a movement compared to a flock of geese or a pack of cyclists. The team have also discovered a key protein that encourages this movement, called Kuzbanian. This will all translate to a better understanding of clinically useful cell migrations as well as cancer cell migrations.
One final thing, is there not an eerie similarity between the migrating cells and that green thing from Ghostbusters?
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