Breaking Down Neighbors to Fuel Tumorigenesis.

Autophagy supports cell growth and survival autonomously by recycling intracellular proteins and/or organelles. Reporting in Nature, Katheder and colleagues (2017) find that tumors trigger non-autonomous autophagy in neighboring cells and distant organs, thus fueling tumor growth and metastasis. This opens new avenues for understanding and manipulating cancers through cell-cell communication.