Working with a line of highly metastatic head and neck cancer cells, a research team at the Winship Cancer Institute and Emory University School of Medicine has found that a specific cell surface receptor present at very low levels in non-metastatic head and neck cancer cells.
These investigators also showed that blocking this receptor suppressed tumor growth and prevented metastatic lesions from forming in the lungs.
Reporting its work in the journal Cancer Research, the team headed by Hyunsuk Shim, Ph.D., isolated the highly metastatic cells by implanting squamous cell carcinomas into mice, isolating metastatic lesions, injecting those cells into a second group of mice, and harvesting metastases again. After a total of four rounds of tumor implantation, harvesting and implanting again, the researchers obtained a highly metastatic population of cells. They then measured messenger RNA expression in the metastatic cell population and the original tumor cells, and by comparing these results, the investigators found that expression levels of mRNA coding for the CXC chemokine receptor-4 (CXCR4) were significantly higher in the metastatic cells.