Scientists at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) and their colleagues are shedding new light on a tumor’s earliest moments—revealing how lung cells with cancer-causing mutations recruit accomplices from healthy surrounding tissue to pave the way for a tumor to develop.

This corruption of the local neighborhood—what scientists call the “tumor microenvironment”—begins surprisingly early, as tumors first emerge, according to a study published April 22 in Nature.

The team’s findings show that when this communication with surrounding cells is disrupted, tumors fail to grow.