The place where cancer starts in the body is called the primary cancer or primary site. Cells from the primary site may break away and spread to other parts of the body. These cells can then grow and form other tumors. These are called secondary cancers or metastases.Scientists funded by Cancer Research UK have found that cancer cells ‘hijack’ a process used by healthy cells to spread throughout the body, completely changing current ways of thinking about cancer metastasis.
They discovered, for example, that healthy pancreatic cells moved to the kidney and became healthy kidney cells. This indicates that metastasis is not an abnormal process unique to cancer, as previously thought, but rather a normal process employed by healthy cells that tumors have exploited to travel to other areas of the body and form metastases.
Despite being one of the main causes of death in cancer patients, metastasis has remained incredibly difficult to prevent, largely because researchers have found it hard to identify key drivers of this process which could be targeted by drugs. Now that they have identified NALCN’s role in metastasis, the team is looking into various ways to restore its function, including using existing drugs on the market.