It's a Cell-Eat-Cell World

For more than 100 years, pathologists have observed cancer cells engulfing other live cells, but scientists are only now beginning to understand how it happens and what it means for tumorigenesis.

Written byJef Akst

| 12 min read

Save for Later

Listen with Speechify

0:00

12:00

CORBIS, LAUGHTING STOCK

It was a late night in 1984, and graduate student Xiaoning Wang was all alone in the lab. At First Military Medical University (now Southern Medical University) in Guangzhou, China, he was working at the lab’s only camera-equipped microscope, under a wooden hood constructed by his advisor, using a hair dryer to keep a cell culture of murine sarcoma cells at 37°C—mouse (and human) body temperature. He’d been doing the same thing nearly every night for the past month, hoping to capture on film what he had witnessed just a few weeks earlier—a tumor cell engulfing a live natural killer (NK) cell, a lymphocyte of the innate immune system and a major player in tumor suppression. After many sleepless nights, he had started to worry ...

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of

Receive full access to digital editions of The Scientist, as well as TS Digest, feature stories, more than 35 years of archives, and much more!

Join for free today

Already a member? Login Here

Meet the Author

Jef Akst
Jef (an unusual nickname for Jennifer) got her master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses. After four years of diving off the Gulf Coast of Tampa and performing behavioral experiments at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, she left research to pursue a career in science writing. As The Scientist's managing editor, Jef edited features and oversaw the production of the TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. In 2022, her feature on uterus transplantation earned first place in the trade category of the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.
View Full Profile