Chaotic tumour tissue may promote cancer spread, ISTA study finds

Researchers at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria in Klosterneuburg have identified a mechanism that may contribute to metastasis, ORF reported. Their findings suggest that a chaotic environment around tumour cells can prompt some of them to migrate.

Whether malignant invasive tumours remain localised or spread to other parts of the body depends partly on genetic factors. According to ISTA, more than 21,300 people in Austria died from such tumours in 2024.

Tumours develop from cells that multiply in healthy tissue and form a cell group. Some remain in the original tissue, while others invade neighbouring tissue, spread through the body and form metastases, for example in the lungs or liver. Individual cells must separate from the group for this to happen, a process previously thought to be determined mainly by genetic factors.

Biologists and physicists at ISTA, working with researchers from the Francis Crick Institute in the United Kingdom, studied how cancer cells behave within a group. They created laboratory-grown tumours in environments with different numbers of obstacles and then used computer simulations. The more heterogeneous the environment, the more individual cells broke away.

The researchers said the cause may also lie in the history of the cell groups. After cells have repeatedly moved through a disordered environment, the entire boundary of the cell group changes, ISTA researcher Edouard Hannezo said. It becomes much rougher and develops more finger-like extensions.

This history apparently increases the likelihood that tumour cell groups will break apart, allowing individual cells to travel to other parts of the body.