Recent researchers discovered a trick that is used by tumour cells to migrate round the body, causing normal adult cell to act like stem cells.

“It is believed to be a major breakthrough in treatment of cancer and regenerative medicine, as large quantities of these reverted cells could be used to treat anything from spinal cord injury to liver damage without the risk of tissue rejection”, as said by Robert Weinberg, a biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and co-author of a study appearing in cell.

“More than 80 percent of cancer in human occurs in epithelial cells,” says study co-author Sendurai Mani, an assistant professor of molecular pathology at the University of Texas’ M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and a former postdoctorate in Weinberg’s lab. Epithelial cells (constitute skin and most internal organs) are the cells that adhere very tightly to one another. Other type of cells are Mesenchymal cells (constitute connective tissue) which migrate within the body. In developing embryo, an initial group of epithelial cells undergoes a shift called “Epithelial to Mesenchymal transition” (EMT) to form bones, blood, cartilage etc.

The previous work of Weinberg’s lab showed that, once tumor is formed in one part of the body, the cancer cells undergo EMT. “The Mesenchymal cells now travel to the remote site, convert back to epithelial cells and clump together to form secondary tumour”, says Mani.

They took the EMT cells and induce those in normal cells. They found that the normal cells were converted into fibroblasts. Fibroblasts are one type of connective tissue that helps in wound healing. After giving a closer look they noted that Fibroblasts have one type of surface proteins which is present in stem cells

When cultured in lab they show that they have an ability to differentiate into two discrete cells, which are found in breast tissue. Not only that, the transformed cells were found to have a similarity with the stem cells of mice and human.

“What we are doing is inducing dedifferentiation” Says Mani. “We found, surprisingly , that EMT and stem cells could be linked, and show that, yes they are very closely linked. Moreover he says, ” The team can determine how to stop cancer cells from undergoing this transformation in the first place. Second—a path they are already pursuing—they can gauge these transformed adult cells worth as stem cell surrogates for regenerative medicine”.

And now the scientists are working on the regenerative thearpies, by inducing EMT in the epithelial cells from the mammaries of the mice, to see if they can grow breasts in the lab. If they succed, then they will be able to regenerate damaged tissue in the patient by using their own epithelial cells.

Source: SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN