The spread of cancer from a tumor's original location to other parts of the body can play a major role in whether the disease turns deadly. Many steps in this process, called metastasis, remain murky. But now scientists are gaining new insights into how cancer cells might squeeze through and even divide within narrow blood vessels while travelling in the body. They report their study using microtubular nanomembranes in the journal ACS Nano.
One thing scientists do know about metastasis is that spreading cancer cells elongate to fit through capillaries — blood vessels as fine as spider silk. They can get trapped in these skinny passages, but despite becoming misshapen, they seem to still be able to divide and form little colonies of cells before dislodging and moving on. If scientists could better understand this process, they could potentially improve anti-metastatic treatment strategies. But studying it in molecular detail is not possible with conventional analytical techniques. So Wang Xi, Christine K. Schmidt and colleagues used transparent, rolled-up nanofilms to study how cancer cells divide in capillaries.
