Head and neck tumors that contain cells undergoing a transition from neatly organized blocks into irregular structures pushing out into the surrounding environment are more likely to invade and spread to other parts of the body, according to a new study led by Harvard Medical School researchers from Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
The findings, published online Nov. 30 in Cell, provide important clues into how head and neck cancers metastasize and may have implications for other common cancers as well.
As part of the study, the researchers have compiled the first atlas of head and neck cancer, revealing the many different kinds of cells, cancerous and non-cancerous, in primary head and neck tumors and their metastases.
Using a process known as single-cell RNA-sequencing, the researchers analyzed more than 6,000 individual cells from head and neck squamous cell carcinomas—the most common head and neck tumor. Through their analysis, the research team created an atlas of all the different cells present in head and neck cancer. They were also able to characterize a unique structural transition involving cancer cells and normal cells in their environment that allows tumors to spread.
“This is the clearest picture we’ve had of this kind of structural transition in a human tumor,” said co-senior author Bradley Bernstein, HMS professor of pathology at Mass General and an institute member at the Broad. “For years, it’s been known that cells can lose their connections to the surrounding tissue and become more mobile, but when, how and where this occurs in human cancer has been long debated.”
“We wondered whether these cells could explain why some tumors spread to the neck and beyond, while others do not.”
Sidharth Puram
