Nature Podcast – Intercellular mitochondria transfer as a source of cancer cells and cancer cell power in the immune response of tumour cells in humans and other species

Don’t miss an episode. You can subscribe to the Nature Podcast on a number of platforms. An RSS feed for the Nature Podcast is available too.

Almost all cells in humans and a number of other species have mitochondria. Over the past two decades, it has become clear that many types of cell can transfer some of their mitochondria to other cell types. This process, called horizontal or intercellular mitochondria transfer, has been implicated in the maintenance of tissue health but can also contribute to cancer1. In Nature, Ikeda and colleagues report that cancer cells get their power from immune cells that are inside the tumours. In exchange, the cancer cells return mitochondria that harbour mutations and these organelles impair the T cells’ antitumour immune response. This way cancer cells can support their metabolism, while at the same time creating favourable conditions for tumour growth.

A Systematic Study of Professor Hiring Practices and the Role of T Cell Ownership in Cancer-Induced Outbreaks in the United States

Criteria to get a promotion to full professorship are variable around the world, revealed in a huge analysis of hiring practices. The authors think that this variability results in researchers being locked out of professor jobs in other countries because of their differing values of a metric. They hope that the database of hiring practices created in this study could help institutions adjust their hiring policies to create a more diverse science workforce.

J.R.B. is currently a consultant for Columbus Instruments and has consulted for Decibio within the past year.

Competing theories about cellular ownership of mitochondria are challenged by this, according to the Washington University School of Medicine researcher.

“My first thought was that this sounds crazy, like science fiction. The data they have for it seems to be what they were looking for, according to an immunologist who was not involved in the research. “This is potentially a totally new biology that we were not looking at.”

The team showed thatinted TILs were less able to divide and commit suicide. In mice with cancer, TILs that had imbibed alien mitochondria showed signs of T cell exhaustion — the loss of cancer-killing potential.