Scientists discover that cancer cells actually "do not speak martial ethics" and use improper means to play insidious tricks

Today, the top academic journal "Nature" published three papers in a row, revealing to us the new lower limit of cancer cells! Scientists originally thought that cancer cells simply grew fast.

These three papers all want to answer a question-how will cancerous cells affect the surrounding healthy cells? In the first paper, a team led by Cambridge University scientists developed a novel microscopy technique to track changes in specific intestinal stem cells in mice.

We know that stem cells can continuously generate new cells.

▲Using new microscopy techniques, researchers found that cancerous cells (purple red) expanded faster than healthy cells (blue/yellow) (picture source: reference [6]; Credit: ©Yum/IMBA )

Scientists from the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, the United Kingdom, the United States and other countries and regions used mouse and human bowel cancer models to further clarify the underlying mechanism in two other papers.

After analysis, the researchers found several genes related to this phenomenon, and one gene called Notum attracted their attention.

▲The discovery of these three papers (picture source: reference [1]; Credit: ©Nature)

Similar to the findings made in the first paper, the NOTUM protein seems to only affect healthy cells, not cells with genetic mutations.

However, the last two papers also pointed out that if the WNT signaling pathway can be reactivated, or the function of NOTUM can be inhibited, the mutant stem cells and healthy stem cells can return to the same starting line for a fair fight.

Taken together, these three studies show how cancerous intestinal stem cells can inhibit the normal function of surrounding healthy stem cells, allowing themselves to gain an improper lead in the local environment.

Reference materials:

[1] Cancer stem cells in the gut have a bad influence on neighbouring cells, Retrieved June 2, 2021, from https:// Yum, MK, Han, S.

[3] van Neerven, SM, de Groot, NE, Nijman, LE et al.

[4] Flanagan, DJ, Pentinmikko, N.

[5] Clinical trial launched following discovery that psychiatric drug may prevent bowel cancer, Retrieved June 2, 2021, from https:// Coloring tumors reveals their bad influence, Retrieved June 2, 2021, from https://