Fighting cancer that spreads to new organs all across the body makes it much more challenging.

The metastatic tumours that spread from the original have now been demonstrated by researchers at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden to adjust their metabolism to the tissue in which they thrive. The discovery is a key piece of the puzzle in the search for more effective treatments and represents a breakthrough in our understanding of metastatic cancer.

The human body's metabolism is like its internal combustion engine. It is necessary for our cells to develop and obtain energy. As a result, it is a crucial target for cancer therapies that aim to halt the spread of cancer cells.

Researchers from Chalmers' Department of Systems and Synthetic Biology have recently published a new study that looks at how metabolism functions in cancer cells that have spread to new organs via metastases, also known as secondary tumours. The study provided the researchers with fresh perspectives on how metastases adjust to their new surroundings.

"Obviously, the local environment affects the cancer cells more than previously known. The metastatic tumours should show the same metabolic properties no matter where in the body they are located, but we discovered that the cancer cells largely adapted their metabolism to the new tissue in order to continue to develop and grow. This is important knowledge, which shows that we cannot consider the metastases as their original tumours," says Fariba Roshanzamir, PhD in Systems and Synthetic Biology at Chalmers and the study's lead author.

Tools to inhibit cancer metabolism

The ground-breaking findings were established by Fariba Roshanzamir, a member of professor Jens Nielsen's research team at Chalmers, in collaboration with Swedish and foreign colleagues.

The study was particularly concerned with so-called triple-negative breast cancer, a severe form of the disease that is challenging to treat with medication. However, the researchers claim that the findings are generalisable to all forms of metastatic cancer. This provides a fresh opportunity to create treatments that work better.

"If we manage to shut down the metabolism in a tumour, it will stop working and this study provides important keys to better understanding what to target. Selecting metabolic inhibitors that specifically target the metastases in the organs to which the tumour has spread, rather than treating them as their original tumours, is of great importance to be able to find good strategies for treatments in the future," she said.

A fresh perspective on the traits of metastasis

One of the main reasons for death for cancer patients today is the spread of the disease to new organs. One of the study's authors, Jens Nielsen, a professor of systems and synthetic biology at Chalmers University of Technology, thinks that it may result in a new understanding of the characteristics and behaviour of metastases.

This is a significant development in our understanding of metastatic cancer and a crucial step toward developing more specialised medications, the author claims.