Duke Researchers Identify Signals that Drive Tumors to Spread

A team of international researchers from Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (USA) have identified a self-perpetuating signaling circuit inside connective tissue cells that allows these cells to form a front and a back and propel themselves in a particular direction over a long period of time. This propulsion is the same movement that tumor cells use to invade healthy tissue during cancer metastasis so cracking the code to this signaling network may lead to new therapeutic strategies against cancer and other devastating diseases.