Finding--and fighting--fat that fuels cancer.

• Position: Adipocytes - Brief article

Scientists have made a key observation regarding how fat cells (also referred to as adipocytes) interact with tumor cells and thereby allow a cancer to thrive in dense breast tissue or fatty livers. Fat cells near tumors secrete a variety of extracellular factors, some of which boost tumor development and progression, report researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas.

The correlation between obesity and various solid and hematological cancers--along with other diseases like diabetes, osteoarthritis, and cardiovascular disease--long has been known. The ongoing challenge--and the focus of this latest investigation by Philipp Scherer, director of the Touchstone Center for Diabetes Research--is to identify which extracellular factors are most important in driving tumor growth and to determine how to target them.

The researchers have found that endotrophin is a fat cell-derived extracellular factor that fuels the growth of breast tumors...