Researchers decipher the mechanism that enables skin cancer to metastasize to the brain – and inhibited its spread by 80%
Source: Eurek Alert!, September 2022
Researchers from Tel Aviv University deciphered, for the first time, a mechanism that enables skin cancer to metastasize to the brain and managed to delay the spread of the disease by 60% to 80% using existing treatments. The encouraging study was led by Prof. Ronit Satchi-Fainaro and Ph.D. student Sabina Pozzi of the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University. The results were published in the scientific journal JCI Insight.
“In an advanced stage, 90% of melanoma (skin cancer) patients will develop brain metastases," explains Prof. Satchi-Fainaro. “This is a puzzling statistic. We expect to see metastases in the lungs and liver, but the brain is supposed to be a protected organ. The blood-brain barrier keeps harmful substances from entering the brain, and here it supposedly doesn’t do the job—cancer cells from the skin circulate in the blood and manage to reach the brain. We asked ourselves with ‘whom’ the cancer cells ‘talk’ to in the brain to infiltrate it."
The researchers from Tel Aviv University found that in melanoma patients with brain metastases , the cancer cells “recruit" cells called astrocytes, star-shaped cells found in the spinal cord and brain which are responsible for homeostasis, or maintaining stable conditions, in the brain.