Tunnel Vision

A map drawn on a piece of paper can’t give you the full impression of a region’s real-world three-dimensional complexity. The same applies to cancer cells, as many experiments designed to improve our understanding examine their behaviour in a flat environment. Suspecting that tumour cell behaviour may be different in the depths of our bodies, researchers have developed a scaffold to enable and observe 3D growth. The study investigated tunnelling nanotubes (TNTs) long extensions from the cancer cells as they grew on a structure made of crosshatched nanofibres (pictured). TNTs transmit signals between cells and allow tumours to extend their microenvironments in many directions, ultimately aiding and abetting cancer spread. Describing the microscopic biophysics of these terrible tentacles, and providing a platform for further investigation, will help explain how cancers corrupt their environment and spread to new areas, as well as possibly pointing to new ways of keeping them in check.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by Aniket Jana and colleagues
• Department of Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Cancers, April 2022