The rapid progression of breast cancer has been linked to immune cells called macrophages. Now researchers have identified a protein that these 'tumour-associated' macrophages (TAMs) secrete that drives metastasis. Erwei Song at Sun-Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China, Xuebiao Yao at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei and their colleagues found that the most abundant cytokine - a cell-signalling protein -produced by TAMs isolated from patients with invasive breast cancer is CCL18.
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