Recent research has unveiled a groundbreaking discovery: sensory neurons play a crucial role in promoting breast cancer metastasis. By secreting neuropeptides, these nerves enhance tumor growth and spread, revealing a potential new therapeutic target. This finding opens new avenues for cancer treatment and underscores the critical link between the nervous system and cancer.
Key Takeaways
- Neuropeptide Role: Sensory nerves secrete neuropeptides that interact with cancer cells, promoting tumor growth and metastasis.
- Clinical Implications: Aprepitant, an FDA-approved drug, can reduce breast cancer metastasis by targeting this neuro-cancer pathway.
- Research Impact: The study bridges cancer biology and neuroscience, paving the way for novel therapeutic strategies against metastasis.
The Role of Sensory Neurons in Cancer
Cancer doesn’t grow in a vacuum—each tumor grows in a particular microenvironment within the body and spreads through a tangled web of vasculature and nerves. Scientists have come to understand that the most potent therapies address cancer in context—accounting for both the tumor and the support structure that forms around it.
A new paper in Nature reveals that the activation of sensory nerves within breast tumors is playing a critical role in promoting not only cancer growth but also its spread, known as metastasis. The findings suggest that targeting this pathway may help stop breast cancer progression in its tracks.
Breakthrough Study
The study determined that an FDA-approved drug commonly used to treat nausea may prevent metastasis in these instances. “Hyperactivation of neurons has been observed for tumors growing in the brain, but this is the first time we’ve seen it in an epithelial tumor such as breast cancer,” says Veena Padmanaban, a postdoctoral fellow and lead author of the study.
“This is an exciting discovery—no one has seen peripheral nerves release a signal to enhance metastasis before.”
Cancer and the Nervous System
Scientists have long known a relationship exists between cancer cells and the nervous system. Solid tumors secrete proteins that recruit nerves to the primary tumor site. Nerve cell markers have been detected in cancers of the head and neck, breast, cervix, esophagus, colorectum, and pancreas. Studies suggest that the nerves of the autonomic nervous system can help kickstart prostate and stomach tumors.
Whether the nervous system promoted the metastatic progression of breast cancer—the most common cancer worldwide—remained a mystery. But it seemed plausible. Healthy breast tissue is full of sensory nerves, and evidence of breast tumor innervation existed in the literature.
Experimental Findings
The team used mouse models to compare innervation between highly metastatic and less metastatic tumors. They then cultured cancer cells alongside sensory neurons to study their effects on breast cancer cells in vitro, analyzed publicly available data to correlate nerve markers with metastatic recurrence in breast cancer patients, and then removed sensory nerves within breast tumors.
The results demonstrated that innervation drives metastasis. “We found that the nerves not only promote the growth of breast cancer cells—they also help cells metastasize and break into tissues better,” says Tavazoie, the Leon Hess Professor at Rockefeller.
Clinical Implications
The findings have strong clinical implications. Publicly available data suggests that elevated levels of the neuropeptide that promotes metastasis and gene signatures associated with this neuropeptide and ssRNA are all linked to increased metastasis and lower survival rates in breast cancer patients.
The team managed to impede the growth and metastasis of multiple models of breast cancer when they treated mice with aprepitant, an FDA-approved TACR1 antagonist normally given to chemotherapy patients to prevent nausea.
“Because aprepitant is already approved and safe, oncologists may consider clinical trials to test the impact of this medication on cancer progression in patients with breast cancer,” Tavazoie says.
Even if aprepitant doesn’t offer the most effective treatment, the study gives researchers new therapeutic targets and opens the door to targeted therapies. “Our work may help bridge the fields of cancer metastasis biology and neuroscience, encouraging cancer biologists and neuroscientists to work together and bring each field’s tools to the table.”
Sources
- Sensory Neurons Play Role in Cancer Development – Neuroscience News, Neuroscience News.
