Exosomes Again

Exosomes are those small sets of material ejected from cells. Cancer cells like all other cells eject these exosomes. A recent paper presents an interesting result; namely that exosomes may excite normal cells to become malignant. This is effectively an infectious scenario for cancer.

In the paper by Stefanius et al they note:

Cancer evolves through a multistep process that occurs by the temporal accumulation of genetic mutations mediated by intracellular and extracellular cues. We observe that exosomes isolated from pancreatic cancer cells, but not normal pancreatic cells, can initiate the first step of malignant cell transformation. Injection of exosome-initiated transformed cells into mice results in aggressive tumor growth. Using proteomic profiling and DNA sequencing of exosome-treated and transformed cells, we show that cancer cell exosomes act as a classic initiator by causing random genetic changes in recipient cells. Our studies provide new insight into a function of cancer cell exosomes and how they might specifically contribute to orchestrated local cell transformation.

This is an interesting result and worth following.