Cancer's one-way ticket to the brain

HOW do cancer cells get into the brain? A "ticket" made of three genes seems to grant them access in mice. The discovery could one day lead to drugs that cancel out a similar ticket in people.
Around 10 per cent of people whose cancer has metastasised, or spread beyond the original site, develop brain tumours. But it's a mystery how cancer cells get past the "blood-brain barrier", which prevents the passage of most cells.
To investigate, Joan Massagué and his colleagues at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York city injected human breast cancer cells into the arteries of mice. Three key genes were expressed in those cells that infiltrated the brain: one that helped cancer cells "stick" to blood vessels in the brain, another that is known to make capillaries leaky, and a third that makes cancer cells mobile (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature08021).

Published in New Scientist 13-May-2009