Researchers at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) have discovered that immune cells build distinct “neighborhoods” around cancer cells. In one of these neighborhoods, immune cells communicate with cancer cells to promote their ability to spread to distant organs and mediate metastasis formation.
The research, which could eventually help develop new therapies to target metastasis, is published in the journal Nature Cancer. It was led by Cédric Blanpain, M.D., Ph.D., an investigator at the WEL Research Institute, director of the Laboratory of Stem Cells and Cancer and professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles.