Cancer can be just like the killer in a horror movie – it may seem like he’s been destroyed forever by the Good Guy, but then he pops back up again to terrorize.
Similarly, chemotherapy is designed to kill cancer cells, but some of them still survive treatment by entering a state known as cellular senescence.
Far from lying dormant, these cells remain metabolically active, releasing a mixture of proteins, fats, and other molecules that can reshape the tumor and its environment by signaling to nearby cells.
New research published in Nature Aging has just discovered that one of those signals might be the same stuff that’s sitting in your kitchen cabinet, and it may be instructing cancer cells to spread.
