Uncovering the mystery behind invading pancreatic cancer cells

New insights into how pancreatic cancer cells spread throughout the blood stream and how they can be inhibited could lead to new and improved treatments, a recent study suggests.Scientists at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Boston University (MA, USA) and the University of Pennsylvania (PA, USA) have begun to uncover why pancreatic cancer cells escape tumors and enter the bloodstream very early in the disease’s lifetime. This leads to a fast rate of spread that can start before diagnosis. The mystery lies in pancreatic tumors appearing to lack blood vessels, which prevents cancer drugs reaching and killing them,...