Sneha Khedkar in The Scientist:
In 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, oncology researcher Barry Hudson moved his laboratory from the University of Miami to Georgetown University. Many universities dialed down research activities due to the pandemic, causing a slight delay in setting up the new lab. “What that led to was, we ended up with…a lot of mice,” said Hudson. By the time the team restarted their work, the majority of the mice were more than one year old, reaching old age. Hudson recognized a unique opportunity to study cancer in these older animals, which is particularly relevant since older people experience worse outcomes in some cancers, including breast cancer.1
Despite this fact, most breast cancer researchers use two- to three-month-old mice for their work, which are equivalent in age to 15-20-year-old humans.2 “People didn’t really know what happened to cancers in older mice,” said Hudson. Now, by using aged mice, Hudson and his team discovered that aging significantly increased breast cancer metastasis via a cell surface receptor that contributes to inflammation.3 Their findings, published in Communications Biology, highlight how aging alters the host environment to boost cancer aggression and offer potential therapeutic targets to contain metastasis in older patients with cancer.
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.