Neuropilin-2 upregulation by stromal TGFβ1 induces lung disseminated tumor cells dormancy escape and promotes metastasis outgrowth.

Summary: When cancer spreads to other parts of the body, like the lungs, the cancer cells can sometimes "sleep" or stay hidden for a long time. These sleeping cancer cells are called DTCs. Scientists wanted to know what wakes them up and causes them to grow into dangerous tumors.

They found that a protein called TGFβ1 acts like an alarm clock. It tells the sleeping cancer cells to make another protein called NRP2. Once NRP2 is made, the cancer cells wake up, grow, and spread. When researchers blocked or deleted NRP2 in the lab, the cancer cells stayed asleep, and tumors didn't grow. This exciting discovery means that if we can create medicines to block these specific proteins, we might be able to keep cancer asleep forever and stop it from spreading!