Full Text:
When Hippocrates first described cancer around 400 B.C., he referred to the disease's telltale tumors as "karkinos" -- the Greek word for crab. The "Father of Western Medicine" likely noted that cancer's creeping projections mirrored certain crustaceans, and the tumors' characteristic hardness resembled a crab's armored shell.
Later, scientists added another attribute: Tumors are hypoxic. That is, they grow so large and dense that they exclude blood vessels, causing a lack of oxygen in their cores. But what role these characteristics play in the development of cancer has remained a mystery. Moving possibly one step closer to an answer, National Science Foundation-funded scientists have found that, in breast cancer, tumor hardness and hypoxia trigger a biological switch that causes certain cells to embark on a cancer-promoting program. This biological switch is critical to a tumors' ability to invade other tissue, a process called metastasis -- and could offer a promising treatment target.Image credit: Image courtesy of Celeste Nelson, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering
