Warning system can flag up secondary tumor sites

In 10 seconds? An early study suggests changes in healthy tissue can indicate that cancer from another site will spread there, making it potentially possible to deal with cancer before it becomes incurable.

What’s the discovery? Researchers at Tel-Aviv University in Israel have discovered that healthy cells start to change before metastatic breast cancer cells arrive and start to multiply in the lungs, producing a secondary tumor. (Metastatic are cells that travel across the body from the primary tumor site and in the case of breast cancer they often land in the lungs). When cancer cells metastasize, they often invade primary organs and their proliferation can cause severe functional disruption, often leading to the death of the patient.