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Lung signals drive cancer-associated blood clots

Fatal blood clots can arise in people who have cancer. The discovery of a cue that underlies these clots offers a therapeutic target and a way to assess clot risk.
By
  1. Ana Luísa Correia

    1. Ana Luísa Correia is at the Champalimaud Foundation, Champalimaud Research, 1400-038 Lisbon, Portugal.

Blood clots form inside blood vessels, obstructing blood flow, and are a common complication for people with cancer. Regardless of the type of cancer, the formation of blood clots (also known as thrombosis) can often lead to death1,2, especially at an advanced stage of disease when cancer has spread to distant organs to form new sites of tumour growth, called metastases. Drugs to prevent clots lower the risk of cancer-associated clots and death, yet these therapies are given in a manner that does not assess the risk of clotting or excessive bleeding due to clot prevention. Writing in Cell, Lucotti et al.3 identify small extracellular vesicles (sEVs), which are released by the lungs, as the source of a pro-clotting signal associated with cancer. The authors suggest that a blood-based molecule can be used to predict who is at high risk of clots and who could benefit from timely anti-clotting drugs.

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Nature 640, 883-884 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-01130-y

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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