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How cancer invasion takes shape

Skin cancers resulting from distinct mutations have characteristic tissue forms and different disease outcomes. Analysing the architecture of benign and aggressive tumours reveals how mechanical forces drive these patterns.
By
  1. Karolina Punovuori

    1. Karolina Punovuori is at the Helsinki Institute of Life Science and in the Stem Cells and Metabolism Research Program, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Helsinki 00290, Finland, and also at the Wihuri Research Institute, Helsinki.

  2. Sara A. Wickström

    1. Sara A. Wickström are at the Helsinki Institute of Life Science and in the Stem Cells and Metabolism Research Program, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Helsinki 00290, Finland, and at the Wihuri Research Institute, Helsinki, and also at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing, Cologne, Germany.

The interplay between form and function is a cornerstone of biology, and the dismantling of normal tissue organization is a hallmark of many diseases. A long-standing question is whether changes in tissue architecture are merely a by-product of destructive diseases such as cancer, or whether they actively influence disease progression. Distinct types of skin cancer are driven by specific genetic abnormalities and give rise to distinctive tumour shapes. However, how these structures arise, and whether their specific forms affect the different outcomes of benign and malignant cancers, has been unclear. Writing in Nature, Fiore et al.1 report an analysis of skin cancer in mice that uncovers some of the key principles involved.

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Nature 585, 355-356 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02490-3

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