How Tumours Grow

Compared with cells at the centre of a tumour, those on the surface are adjacent to healthy, blood-supplied tissues. This fact led to the hypothesis that cells divide rapidly at the surface of a tumour but rarely at its core. A recent spatial genomics analysis of hundreds of liver cancer samples from various positions and depths within tumours revealed, however, this isn’t the case. Liver cancer cells show uniform growth throughout the tumour mass. The analysis mapped cells bearing new mutations, finding their descendants were located in all directions, not just outward (as would occur with surface-only cell division). Validation was gained through computer models, like the one pictured, which shows mutations spreading uniformly through a tumour to a greater (red) or lesser (blue) extent. Since novel cancer mutations can confer resistance to drugs or immune detection, knowing how and where they arise will inform future tumour-tackling therapies.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image from work by Arman Angaji and colleagues
• Institute for Biological Physics, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, November 2024