ABOVE: Endothelial cells (blue/gray) from mice internalizing exosomes (red) released from chemotherapy-treated tumors
C. CIANCIARUSO/I. KEKLIKOGLOU/EPFL
In some patients with cancer, tumors don’t shrink in response to chemotherapy and these patients are more likely to develop metastatic cancer. Mouse studies have shown that for some drug-resistant cancers, chemotherapy can actually promote metastasis. Now, a study published on December 31 in Nature Cell Biology links the spread of breast cancer from resistant tumors in mice to extracellular vesicles these cancer cells secrete and shows an uptick in their potential to cause metastasis after treatment with some chemotherapeutic drugs.
“We were surprised to see that chemotherapy was enhancing this process of metastasis, mediated by the vesicles,” says Michele De Palma, a cancer biologist at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and one of the paper’s authors. “This was quite counterintuitive.”
Many types of cells produce extracellular vesicles, known as exosomes when they’re a ...
