{"id":30135,"date":"2016-09-13T19:47:52","date_gmt":"2016-09-14T02:47:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/stiff-and-oxygen-deprived-tumors-promote-spread-of-cancer"},"modified":"2017-06-04T14:16:01","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T21:16:01","slug":"stiff-and-oxygen-deprived-tumors-promote-spread-of-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/stiff-and-oxygen-deprived-tumors-promote-spread-of-cancer","title":{"rendered":"Stiff and Oxygen-Deprived Tumors Promote Spread of Cancer"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Interesting read.<\/p>\n

\n

When Hippocrates first described cancer around 400 B.C., he referred to the disease\u2019s telltale tumors<\/a> as \u201ckarkinos\u201d \u2014 the Greek word for crab. The \u201cFather of Western Medicine<\/a>\u201d likely noted that cancer\u2019s creeping projections mirrored certain crustaceans, and the tumors <\/a>\u2018 characteristic hardness resembled a crab\u2019s armored shell.<\/p>\n

Later, scientists<\/a> added another attribute: Tumors are hypoxic. That is, they grow so large and dense that they exclude blood vessels, causing a lack of oxygen in their cores. But what role these characteristics play in the development of cancer has remained a mystery.<\/p>\n

Moving possibly one step closer to an answer, scientists<\/a> from Princeton University<\/a> and the Mayo Clinic Cancer<\/a> Center have found that, in breast cancer, tumor<\/a> hardness and hypoxia trigger a biological switch that causes certain cells to embark on a cancer-promoting program. Reported Aug. 8 in an article<\/a> in the journal Cancer<\/a> Research<\/a>, this biological switch is critical to a tumors\u2019 ability to invade other tissue, a process called metastasis \u2014 and could offer a promising treatment target.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interesting read. When Hippocrates first described cancer around 400 B.C., he referred to the disease\u2019s telltale tumors as \u201ckarkinos\u201d \u2014 the Greek word for crab. The \u201cFather of Western Medicine\u201d likely noted that cancer\u2019s creeping projections mirrored certain crustaceans, and the tumors \u2018 characteristic hardness resembled a crab\u2019s armored shell. Later, scientists added another attribute: [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":395,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/395"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30135"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66250,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30135\/revisions\/66250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}