Towards a better understanding of metastasis

Toni Celià-Terrassa

Hospital del Mar Research Institute, Barcelona, Spain

Most cancer deaths are caused by metastasis, a complex process in which cancer cells from the primary tumour spread to other organs and generate new tumours. During this process, the vast majority of tumour cells fail to adapt to the new tissue and die, meaning that this process selects the most aggressive and best-adapted tumour cells.

The body’s immune system is constantly monitoring the emergence of malignant cells in order to eliminate them. In fact, every tissue and organ in the body is populated by a unique repertoire of immune cells. Despite this, the cells of the most aggressive tumours sometimes manage to escape this surveillance and end up forming metastases.

In this project, the research team starts from the hypothesis that metastasis is the result of a co-evolutionary process of tumour and immune cells in distant organs. By using innovative tools, they will study the spatial and temporal dynamics to track the co-evolution of tumour and immune cells. Understanding these mechanisms will shed light on metastasis and open the door to the development of new treatments.

• Maria Casanova-Acebes, Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas, Madrid, Spain

• Anna Alemany, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands

Single cell mapping of tumor-immune coevolution in organ-specific breast cancer metastasis

€999,868.30