Prostate Cancer

In studies of mice, researchers from Austria and Canada showed that inhibiting the protein could stop the cancerous cells from migrating to the bones.

"RANKL is a protein which tells tumor cells to come to it," said professor Josef Penninger of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.

"It sits on the bones, and when tumor cells circulate in the body, then RANKL attracts them into the bones.” Once a cancer has spread beyond its original site in a process known as metastasis, it becomes much more serious and difficult to treat.

An estimated 70% of patients with progressive breast cancer and 84% of advanced The findings, reported in the journal Nature, explain the puzzle of why certain cancers spread to the bones and how interfering with the process could help to prevent the spread of the disease.

When the researchers gave mice with skin cancer a drug that blocked RANKL, the rodents had fewer tumors in their bones than animals who were not treated.

But the drug did not slow the spread of the cancer to o...

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