Why does breast cancer spread to the spine? Scientists finally have an answer

Greenblatt said that in 70% of cases, people with metastatic breast cancer subsequently develop bone cancer, and the cells preferentially metastasize to the spine. For these patients, “spine metastases are one of the most common complications and one of the most feared.” ScienceNews quoted Greenblatt as saying. The team has found a new type of stem cell that may be involved in this process, he added.

“This is a major advance in our understanding of bone metastases,” ScienceNews quoted Xiang Zhang, a cancer biologist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, who was not involved in the new study.

According to the report, after spreading into the spine, the metastatic tumors can crush the spinal cord, which contains nerve bundles that are crucial for body sensation and movement. This damage to the spinal cord can hinder people’s ability to walk and control their bladder and bowels, and shorten their lifespan.

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Greenblatt said for decades, doctors have known that some cancer cells preferentially seek out the spine, but no one has had a good explanation for why.

The researchers suspected that stem cells in the vertebral bones differed from those in other places in the skeleton, such as the long bones in the arms and legs.

The experiment

In an important experiment, the researchers transplanted spinal stem cells into one hind leg of mice and long bone stem cells into the other. Each transplant formed miniature bones in the animals’ bodies: a small vertebra on the right and a piece of long bone on the left. They then injected breast cancer cells into the mice.

The researchers noted that cells traveled to the mini vertebra almost twice as often as to the small long bone, as if lured by a cancer-calling pied piper, the report said.

The report further said that the newly identified spinal stem cells, found in both mice and humans, secrete a protein called MFGE8 that acts as a tumor attractor, attracting cancer cells to the spinal tissue.

The protein may not be the only factor involved, Greenblatt said, “but it is an important factor in driving tumor cells to the spine.”

It is possible that blocking MFGE8 could prevent or treat spinal metastases. “I think it’s definitely worth further investigation,” said Zhang. But, he noted, it’s too early to know what the therapeutic implications might be.

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Updated: Oct 17, 2023 7:31 PM IST