Scientists from Weill Cornell Medicine, New York-Presbyterian investigators and the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) have identified a protein that causes the spread of cancer in the breast, brain and lung tissues.
According to an article published on Science Daily, the scientists found that this particular protein, which they called CEMIP, prompts blood vessel and resident immune cells in the brain to produce inflammatory molecules, which in turn support the survival and progression of cancer cells to form brain tumors.
The protein, CEMIP, will now be a focus of efforts to predict, prevent and treat brain metastasis, which are a frequent cause of cancer deaths.
The test conducted on patients with breast and lung tumors showed that the protein causes cancer cells to spread to the brain, a process called metastasis. Scientists discovered that higher CEMIP production causes cancerous cells to spread to the brain, and if the production of this protein is limited, it is highly likely that metastasis can be prevented.
In their study, published Nov. 4 in Nature Cell Biology, the scientists found that CEMIP prompts blood vessel and resident immune cells in the brain to produce inflammatory molecules, which in turn support the survival and progression of cancer cells to form brain tumors. In lab-dish and animal-model experiments, removing CEMIP greatly impeded this brain metastasis process. In tests on human patients’ breast and lung tumors, the researchers linked high CEMIP levels to a high risk of metastasis to the brain.
“Our findings suggest that blocking CEMIP could be a good strategy for preventing or treating brain metastasis, and that monitoring CEMIP levels in primary tumors might enable us, for the first time, to predict the risk of brain metastasis,” said co-senior author Dr. David Lyden, the Professor in Pediatric Cardiology, and cell and developmental biology at Weill Cornell Medicine. The team found evidence that CEMIP-containing exosomes from primary breast and lung tumors are taken up mostly by endothelial cells that make up the blood vessels in the brain, and by nearby brain-resident immune cells called microglial cells. The protein triggers changes in these cells including the increased production of inflammatory molecules that previously have been linked to metastasis.
