ABOVE: Cancer cells (green) in this microscopy image send GFP granules to neurons (purple), illuminating how cells interact with their neighbors.
© NICHOLAS J. KRAMER, ELIFE, 9:E61080, 2020
When cancers metastasize, diseased cells travel to distant parts of the body, where they can invade many different tissues and cause tumors to grow in these new locations. Monte Winslow, an immunologist at Stanford University, investigates the mechanics of cancer metastasis with a blend of in vivo models and genomics. But he’s long faced a challenge in understanding just what causes cells to move—mainly, he says, because it’s difficult to study how tumor cells are physically interacting with one another or with surrounding cells.
Existing methods using green fluorescent protein (GFP) or spatial transcriptomics only allow researchers to study interactions indirectly, says Winslow. They give researchers an idea of “who’s close to who, but not who’s touching who, and not who touched who ...
