A breast cancer cell – but where did it come from?
Our bodies are made of hundreds of different types of cells. And when processes inside them go wrong, and allow them to keep dividing uncontrollably, cancers form.
But individual cells are very small – by the time tumours (which are made of millions of cells) are large enough to be detected, the cells that make them up have evolved and changed along the way.
This makes it difficult to trace a particular tumour’s origins – especially given that we’re now discovering that there are many different types (and subtypes) of cancer. Researchers have long wondered what types of cell different tumours originate from, and what triggers them to ‘go rogue’ in the first place.
A fascinating study from our researchers in Cambridge, published late last year, has begun to help answer these questions – at least for breast cancers.
The team, led by Dr John Stingl, traced the ancestry of different types of cell within normal, healthy breast tissue. And they found clues as to how these diverse cell types might be related to some of the different types of breast cancer.
We’re going to look in detail at what they did – and why it’s an important step forward in understanding the disease. But before leaping into the murky world of biological ‘family trees’, it’s worth a quick pause to look at what breasts are made of.
