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Why cancer cells metastasise? Can we stop them from disseminating? Would that help the patients?

We don’t know the answer to the first 2 questions, but by investigating cancer metastasis we aim at finding out ways of targeting it to make the answer to the last question a definite yes!

Hi! My name is Maria and I am a postdoctoral scientist who works in cancer research. My current project focuses on the study of brain metastasis in small cell lung cancer.

I come from Catalonia, where I studied my undergrad degree and did a masters in scientific communication. I then moved here to the UK (Bristol) to do a PhD. I met my Italian husband there! I have also lived in New York, where I got my first postdoctoral research post after finishing my PhD. I am now back in the UK and planning to become a UK citizen soon!

Why cancer cells leave their original tumour, travel through the bloodstream and seed other organs? What makes these cancer cells mobile? What features they have or they acquire in order to survive and grow in distant, unhospitable tissues or organs? Those are some of the questions we, cancer researchers, try to answer every day.

My current project focuses on the study of metastasis, that dissemination of cancer cells, in particular in a highly metastatic cancer such as small cell lung cancer. Small cell lung cancer patients are usually diagnosed when the cancer has already spread to other body organs, such as brain or liver, that is why it is so important to learn ways of stopping these tumour cells before it is too late. Small cell lung cancer is an extremely difficult cancer to study as patients normally get chemotherapy treatment but not surgery, and we are left with no tumour tissue to analyse and to interrogate. My lab pioneered the isolation of tumour cells that are in the blood of these patients. So, by simply withdrawing a bit of blood from these patients, we can get tumour cells to do our research. That is called a liquid biopsy.

I have been analysing the genetic information of tumour cells that were isolated from liquid biopsies and comparing it with the genetic information present in tumour cells growing in the brain or the liver. With that, I aim at identifying what genes are crucial for the growth of metastasis in these organs. Some of these genes might be targetable, there might be drugs that stop the action of these genes in tumour cells. And if we get to stop these genes, we might get to stop metastasis from growing or even occurring in the first place!

Metastatic tumour cells (green) in the brain tissue (purple)

My mornings are always a bit messy. I usually wake up because my daughter Laia screams good morning!, as she was an opera singer, so I need to get her from her cot quite fast. Then I prepare breakfast to both my kids and I drink my coffee. After dressing one kid, then the other, then I get ready, and I prepared the packed lunch, and then make sure the kids have everything they need for the school day, and oh, no!, I have forgotten this, and that, and you know what?, let me get another coffee for the school run…, then I drive to work!

In the lab everyday is different. Depending on the work I need to do it might involve working with my cells in culture in the tissue culture room, or extracting RNA from cells, or staining some tissues with antibodies, which bind to specific proteins highlighting their presence in the cells, or doing some analysis of results in my computer, or even preparing presentations for my lab colleagues or writing research proposals to get more money to continue my research…

Sometimes I go and have lunch with a colleague or a friend, and sometimes I eat in front of my computer while attending a meeting or a seminar.

Then, depending on the day, I need to pick my kids from school, so I drive back home and the mess starts all over again! Bath time, reading the book from school, preparing dinner, having dinner all together talking about how good or difficult our day has been, putting the kids to bed, and…, finally getting some rest!