Sometimes, even a tiny cut can have serious and unexpected consequences. New research reveals that even a minor flesh wound can cause previously dormant cancer cells to develop into tumors.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focuses on basal cell carcinoma, a variety of skin cancer associated with hair follicle cells. Basal cell carcinoma is the most common type of skin cancer, and while it rarely metastasizes or kills it’s still considered malignant.
Biochemists Sunny Wong and Jeremy Reiter, from the University of California, San Francisco, wanted to see how tumors develop from cancerous mutations. To do that, they genetically modified mice so that their hair follicle stem cells expressed the human basal cell carcinoma gene. After giving some of the mice a small cut, and leaving others alone, they discovered that tumors only formed on the hurt mice.
When skin is cut, hair-follicle ...
