April 2 (UPI) — Researchers at the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center have found that cancer cells grow faster when they are placed into fatty, obese tissue.
The team studied a type of breast cancer, known as triple-negative breast cancer, by transplanting it from lean laboratory models into models of obese, lean and formerly obese microenvironments to see how the tumors would react.
“We’re interested in something called the ‘microenvironment,’ which is basically cells around the tumor and the chemicals those cells produce,” Liza Makowski, a UNC Lineberger member and associate professor in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, said in a press release. “In breast cancer, we know that the cancer is embedded in very fatty tissue, because the breast is made up largely of adipose tissue. As a person becomes obese, that can change the adipose tissue, or change this microenvironment where the cancer can start or progress.”
