In the News
Over the past 25 years, anti-angiogenic therapies have moved from a simple "starve the tumor" strategy to a far more nuanced understanding of blood vessels as an active and reprogrammable component of tumors. Here, we elucidate this evolution by asking not just how tumors build abnormal blood vessels, but how those vessels shape the immune microenvironment, resist therapy, and can be strategically “normalized” to improve patient outcomes. We also wanted to capture an emerging frontier: how factors beyond classic growth factors, such as, the nervous system, gut microbiome, sex hormones, aging, and exercise, can also influence tumor vasculature in ways that could open entirely new therapeutic avenues.
Breast cancer can spread—or metastasize—to many different parts of the body, but it’s not well understood why tumors grow better in some organs than others. We explored whether the nutrients available in different tissues help determine where cancer spreads. Using mouse models and advanced metabolic profiling, we measured nutrient levels across several organs and tested how depriving cancer cells of specific nutrients affected their ability to form metastases.
Surprisingly, we found that no single nutrient explains why breast cancer grows in one organ and not another. Instead, a combination of multiple nutrients and cancer cell characteristics work together to determine where tumors can thrive.
See the MGB Research Spotlight HERE
See the article HERE.