Bone mets selfishly use normal bone growth factors to promote tumor growth.
Cancer can be said to be the most selfish disease known to humankind. Like people who illegally copy music or videos and reproduce them for sale, cancer is a “pirate” that does not ask permission for stealing the body’s resources and using them for its own purposes.
When cancer cells break away from the primary tumor, they can travel through the blood or lymph system to other sites. Although it’s difficult for single cells to survive, some are able to eventually “stick” and implant themselves. This is the beginning of a metastatic tumor (one that has spread to another body part. A common area for metastasis (or “mets”) is the bone. While breast and prostate cancers are the most prone to establish bone mets, they can also arise from lung, stomach, bladder, kidney, uterus, thyroid and colorectal cancers.
Because bones are factories for red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets (help form clots to stop bleeding) so there is high blood flow to the marrow and surrounding bone. When tumor cells travel to the bone, they bind with healthy surfaces. Then they begin to “pirate” the resources that bones produce for bone development. These are special substances called growth factors, and bone growth factors are also helped in doing their job by hormones. There are different categories of bone growth factors. Some help the bones lengthen, especially during puberty, which determines overall body size. Some affect the mineral make-up of the bone, or the shape and thickness of the bone. If a bone fractures, or there is an implant, growth factors help heal the break and develop new bone around the implant. When they interact with hormones, it’s as if they get special road maps. In women, estrogens signal the hip bones to widen; in men, male hormones direct the shoulder bones to become broader.
An Oncolink article on bone mets explains what happens when tumor cells start to plunder bones: “As the cancer attacks the bone, these growth factors are released and serve to further stimulate the tumor cells to grow. This results in a self-generating growth loop.”1 As the tumor grows, it disrupts normal bone health by either creating spaces (holes) in the bone structure, or stimulating bony overgrowth. In either case, there are consequences as the integrity of the bone is compromised. One of these is compression of nerves, resulting in bone pain.
There are many ways to manage bone pain so that quality of life is not diminished. The standard of care is to begin with the least intervention needed, and only progress to further treatment if earlier treatment becomes less effective. For bone pain that no longer responds to medication, The Sperling Medical Group offers a groundbreaking, noninvasive and painless treatment called MRI-guided Focused Ultrasound (MRgFUS) using the ExAblate® System.
For more information, or to schedule a consultation, contact The Sperling Medical Group.
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1Matzman, Julia MD and Vachani, Carolyn RN. “Bone Metastasis Treatment with Medications.” Last Modified: October 3, 2016 https://www.oncolink.org/cancers/bone/bone-metastases/bone-metastasis-treatment-with-medications
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