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By Leigh MacMillan /
Illustration by Howard Berman / Getty Images
Cancer cells are the new neighbors who turn their noses up at the "rules." They're the ones who never mow the yard, install an oversized plastic play structure, paint their home an unapproved color, and plan an addition that will surely encroach on the property lines. It's up to the neighborhood association to flex its muscles and force these rabble-rousing homeowners to fit in.
Or else. Like a neighborhood, the "microenvironment" around a tumor may be able to push cancer cells to behave, suggesting new therapeutic possibilities.
"Our approach to cancer therapy for many years has been to kill the proliferating cancer cells," says Lynn Matrisian, Ph.D., professor and chair of Cancer Biology. "With the growing recognition of the microenvironment's role in cancer, there has been a change in thinking. Can we find ways to 'trick' the microenvironment into having a suppressive function, so the tumor cells don't do anything – they just sit there, and cancer becomes a chronic disease."
The way forward, Matrisian says, is to fully understand the molecules and signaling pathways that govern interactions between tumor cells and their surroundings. This area of research got a boost this year with the launch of the Tumor Microenvironment Network (TMEN), a National Cancer Institute-supported initiative. Ten groups, including a team at Vanderbilt, will be working to define the interactions of tumor cells with their environments.
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