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Cancer metastasizes through the fusion of tumor cells with immune cells, according to a case report published online May 28 in Cancer Genetics.
“We think what is happening is the initial cancer cells from the primary tumor are blending or hybridizing with immune system cells that respond to the tumor as nonself. By hybridizing with those immune system cells, it looks like ‘self’ so that the immune system doesn’t attack and destroy [the tumor],” says first author Greggory LaBerge, a medical geneticist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine who also directs the Denver Police Department’s Forensics and Evidence Division.
LaBerge and his colleagues analyzed the DNA of a woman in her late 70s who had received a bone marrow transplant from an anonymous male donor several years earlier as treatment for her chronic myelomonocytic leukemia. She later developed metastatic melanoma. The tissue ...
