Sensory nerves help cancer spread

cancer has an unsettling ability to circumvent our natural defenses, growing and metastasizing from one place to another despite the body’s best efforts to contain it. Now, Rockefeller researchers have shown how the disease appears to be co-opting the nervous system to extend its reach.

Previous studies had shown that cancer and the nervous system often pair up in a malignant pas de deux known as the “neuro-cancer axis,” with tumor cells recruiting nerves to their primary site and the nervous system kickstarting tumor growth in turn.

But researchers in Sohail Tavazoie’s Elizabeth and Vincent Meyer Laboratory of Systems Cancer Biology have learned that nerves don’t just foster tumor growth, they also drive metastasis, which is the main cause of death in most cancers. “This is an exciting discovery—no one has seen peripheral nerves release a signal to enhance metastasis before,” explains Veena Padmanaban, a postdoctoral fellow in the Tavazoie lab and lead author of the study exploring the relationship between sensory nerves and breast cancer.

Tavazoie’s team used mouse models to compare innervation between highly metastatic and less metastatic tumors and found that sensory nerves were spurring breast cancer metastasis. When they analyzed publicly available data, they discovered a similar trend among human breast cancer patients. But the implications of their work could be even broader: The group found that nerve-tumor interactions also activated genes in nearby cells through a process known as RNA signaling.

While the ramifications of that aren’t yet clear, “it was unexpected and may have relevance that extends beyond cancer,” Tavazoie, Leon Hess Professor, explains.

In the meantime, the team managed to impede the growth and metastasis of multiple models of breast cancer when they treated mice with aprepitant, an FDA-approved anti-nausea medication already commonly prescribed for chemotherapy patients.

“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.