The cancer cells of some men feature a striking mutation: their Y chromosome is missing altogether. Now, tantalizing research suggests that this mutation can spread 'contagiously' from tumour cells to immune cells, which lose their cancer-fighting prowess after their Y chromosome disappears. The evidence for the contagion mechanism is not definitive. But the work provides strong evidence that losing the Y chromosome makes cancer cells more aggressive ' and that immune cells that lack y chromosomes are less effective. These findings could explain the authors' observation that tumours missing the Y chromosome tend to be deadlier than those retaining it. The results are published on 4 June in Nature1. 'One thing is clear,' says Dan Theodorescu, a co-author of the paper and a cancer biologist at the University of Arizona, Tucson. 'If you take cells and you knock out the Y chromosome, bad stuff happens.' Scientists have known for decades that cancer cells often lose their Y chromosome,...
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