http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/cancer-test-0324.html
I'll look into Mena and TMEMs.
Recently, Condeelis found that breast cancer spreads only when a specific
trio of cells are present together in the same microanatomic site: an
endothelial cell (a type of cell that lines the blood vessels), a perivascular
macrophage (a type of immune cell found near blood vessels), and a tumor cell
that produces the protein Mena.
In a paper published in Developmental Cell in December, Condeelis and
Gertler, who is a member of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer
Research at MIT, showed that Mena dramatically enhances a cancer cell's
invasiveness.
"It's an important mechanism by which the cell gains the ability
to become invasive and metastatic," says Gertler.
In the new Clinical Cancer Research study, the researchers defined a
site with these three cell types as a tumor microenvironment of metastasis, or
TMEM. Weill Cornell pathologists, aided by Einstein and MIT scientists,
developed a tissue test to detect the presence and density of TMEMs. The test
consists of a triple immunostain containing antibodies to the three cell types.
A high number of TMEMs in a tissue sample means that the tumor is likely to
metastasize or has already done so.
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