Vampire Tumors
Doctors have shown that cancer cells are able to directly "connect" to the neurons of the brain
Sergey Vasiliev, Naked Science
Two new articles published in the journal Nature have revealed another amazing and frightening ability of cancer cells. The fact is that a few years ago, the team of Stanford University professor Michelle Monje discovered that the development of glioma – the main type of brain tumor – accelerates if the surrounding neurons show high activity.
Even then, the authors suggested: this is due to the fact that the tumor receives some substances from them. Soon the hypothesis was confirmed: experiments with GM mice showed that when suppressing the synthesis of proteins that control the formation of synapses, connections of nerve cells, glioma actually stops growing. A new work by Monier's team (Venkatesh et al., Electrical and synaptic integration of glioma into neural circuits), demonstrates this mechanism in humans as well.
Scientists have shown that some tumor cells form "synapses" visible under the microscope, connecting directly to nerve cells. Thus, cancer "integrates" directly into the neural networks of the brain, sucking the substances coming from them. Moreover, the glioma itself was able to stimulate the activity of neurons, enhancing the flow that feeds it.
The authors of the second article in the journal Nature (Venkataramani et al., Glutamatergic synaptic input to glioma cells drives brain tumour progression), doctors from the team of Professor Frank Winkler of Heidelberg University, who studied the process of "embedding" another type of glioma in the brain, came to similar conclusions. "They act like vampires," Winkler summarized the results of this work. The question remains, how capable of such "neural parasitism" are other cancers, including those that develop in other tissues, where numerous cells of the peripheral nervous system reach.
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