Mitochondria produce energy for the cell, but have a number of other important roles.Credit: Professors P. Motta & T. Naguro/Science Photo Library
Cancer cells use mitochondria stolen from immune cells to spread and escape detection, according to a study published this week in Cell Metabolism1.
Scientists have struggled to fully explain how some tumour cells can spread to and survive in lymph nodes, which are packed with cells that should be able to kill them.
A new kind of mitochondrion
Derick Okwan-Duodu, an immunologist and clinical pathologist at Stanford University in California, looked for answers in the emerging field of mitochondrial transfer, in which the tiny cellular energy factories known as mitochondria move from one cell to another.
Okwan-Duodu and his colleagues found that cancer cells implanted in mice…