Illuminating a Cancer’s Origins

Source: The Scientist, February 2016

Researchers have developed a technique to visualize the origin of melanoma in zebrafish, throwing light on a genetic switch for cancer.

Many cells containing cancer-associated genes never become tumors. Using a fluorescent reporter to highlight cells activating stem cell-like patterns of gene expression, researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital have now developed a technique to visualize the origins of tumors in zebrafish. The team’s findings were published last week (January 29) in Science.

“An important mystery has been why some cells in the body already have mutations seen in cancer, but do not yet fully behave like the cancer,” Charles Kaufman of Boston Children’s Hospital said in a statement. “We found that the beginning of cancer occurs after activation of an oncogene or loss of a tumor suppressor, and involves a change that takes a single cell back to a stem cell state.”