Shi B Chia, Bryan J Johnson, Junxiao Hu, Roel Vermeulen, Marc Chadeau-Hyam, Fernando Guntoro, Hugh Montgomery, Meher Preethi Boorgula, Varsha Sreeka, Andrew Goodspeed, Bennett Davenport, Felipe V Pereira, Vadym Zaberezhnyy, Wolfgang E Schleicher, Dexiang Gao, Andreia N Cadar, Michael Papanicolaou, Afshin Beheshti, Stephen B Baylin, James Costello, Jenna M Bartley, Thomas E Morrison, Julio A Aguirre-Ghiso, Mercedes Rincon, James DeGregori
Breast cancer is the second most common cancer globally. Most deaths from breast cancer are due to metastatic disease which often follows long periods of clinical dormancy 1 . Understanding the mechanisms that disrupt the quiescence of dormant disseminated cancer cells (DCC) is crucial for addressing metastatic progression. Infection with respiratory viruses (e.g. influenza or SARS-CoV-2) is common and triggers an inflammatory response locally and systemically 2,3 . Here we show that influenza virus infection leads to loss of the pro-dormancy mesenchymal phenotype in breast DCC in the lung, causing DCC proliferation within days of infection, and a greater than 100-fold expansion of carcinoma cells into metastatic lesions within two weeks...
April 5, 2024: Research Square