"A maggot, of course, looks very different from a fruit fly. Generally when it becomes an adult, a maggot pretty much melts down all its material and starts over, building new cells and tissues. But not completely. A maggot has a rudimentary tubular structure that supplies oxygen, and that structure forms the basis for the air sac," said Bohmann.

"The formation of the air sac in a fruit fly is a great example of careful, planned invasive cell movement," added Bohmann. "It resembles, in many ways, the invasive growth carried out by a tumor in the body of a person with aggressive cancer. That's why we think that it's possible that cancer cells spread into healthy tissue by hijacking similar normal mechanisms of tissue growth."

Scientists have known that fibroblast growth factor or FGF plays an important role in directing tissues to migrate and grow through other tissues. FGF has a part in creating the air sac as well as other processes involving growth and spread of tissue.

Now Bohmann's team has identified a molecule that controls FGF. That important task falls to a protein known as a matrix metalloprotease or MMP. Scientists had known that this class of proteins has an important role directly clearing a path for one type of tissue to grow through another. MMPs play a role in a myriad of processes involved in tissue rearrangement, including the growth of lung, breast and kidney tissue.

Bohmann's team found that in the fruit fly, MMP2 controls FGF. While Bohmann says the involvement of an MMP in some aspects of invasive tissue growth has already been known, Bohmann's team found that the protein works by controlling FGF signaling, which is a surprise. If a similar mechanism is at work in humans, scientists might be able to exploit it as a new way to knock out FGF, which contributes to many types of cancer.

Source: University of Rochester Medical Center