Novel kidney cancer study sheds light into how cancers invade and metastasize

October 12, 2021
Announcement
Imaging, Clinical Trial, Research
MRI of a kidney primary tumor (PT) that has extended into the largest vein in the body – the inferior vena cava, known as a tumor thrombus (TT), and an accompanying metastasis (Met).

It’s often cancer’s spread, not the original tumor, that poses the disease’s deadliest risk. And yet, metastasis is one of the least understood aspects of cancer biology.

In a newly published study in Nature Communications, UTSW KCP researchers leverage a unique aspect of kidney cancer, where the tumor grossly invades into the vasculature, to lift the veil on how cancer invades and metastasizes. They show that tumor invasion involves the transient activation of an abnormal cell fate program, and that invasion is not always driven by the most evolved and aggressive cells in the tumor. PRESS RELEASE