Early research suggests existing drugs could strangle building blocks of metastasis
Metastatic disease is overwhelmingly responsible for cancer-related deaths, accounting for 90% of fatalities. Using existing drugs, researchers at the University of Basel may have found a strategy that stifles the spread of malignant circulating tumour cells (CTCs), the harbingers of the spread of cancer.
In the mid 19th century Australian pathologist Thomas Ashworth hypothesized that CTCs — cancerous cells that break away from a primary tumor and enter the bloodstream — were a fundamental prerequisite to metastasis. But isolating them was a big challenge, akin to the proverbial needle in a haystack as they are extremely rare, even in patients with advanced metastatic cancers (estimated at one CTC/billion normal blood cells), although recent technological advances have allowed for their detection, the Basel-based researchers noted in the journal Cell.
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