Ovarian cancer cells spread away from the site of a primary tumour by moving healthy cells out of the way, according to work by Joan Brugge of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and her colleagues.

Brugge's team used time-lapse video microscopy to spy on ovarian cancer cells as they interacted with healthy cells in culture in a model of cancer metastasis. When the two cell types came into contact, the extracellular matrix surrounding the healthy cells disassembled, and they moved away from the point of contact with the tumour cells. This displacement, Brugge's group showed, depends on three proteins: α5β1 integrin, talin 1 and myosin. In addition, the interaction with myosin and talin 1 is required to generate the force that physically pushes healthy cells out of the way.

Cancer Discov. doi:10.1158/2159-8274.CD-11-0010 (2011)