Adrenal glands are “spreaders,” the study found. They are 1.91 times as likely to spread lung cancer cells as to receive them, and kidneys were 2.86 times as likely. Bone metastases were called “sponges.” They are 0.75 times as likely to spread lung cancer as to receive it, meaning they are net recipients of the cells.
The study explains the spread of resistant cancer cells that have mutated to evade cancer drugs, said John Heymach, chair of the Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology program at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Metastasis had long been assumed to be a “unidirectional” process from the cancer’s place of origin to more distant parts of the body, Heymach said. But the mutant cells didn’t follow that pattern.
“These mutations often show up not just at one tumor, as we would expect if it occurred randomly, but at several tumors at once,” Heymach said. “This (study) explains that observation. The metastases can be seeding other metastases or even reseeding the primary tumor.
“The reason this is relevant is that as we develop drugs that target specific mutations, we may have to take this into account.” Heymach said. ”As resistance emerges, resistance can spread from tumor to tumor. So if resistance emerges, it may be emerging from a distant tumor that is reseeding the primary.”
Viterbi, one of the paper’s reviewers, said it was “satisfying” to find his research spreading into the life sciences.
“It’s very exciting to see mathematics being applied in all sorts of ways,” Viterbi said. “For decades, it was mostly in physics or physical phenomena. Now it’s being used in software and even in biology. It isn’t just this, it was much more effectively used in DNA sequence analysis where you’ve got lots and lots of bits.”