Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is highly aggressive and difficult to treat. But a new paper by scientists at the Hackensack Meridian Center for Discovery and Innovation (CDI) and colleagues at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center says the role of adipose tissue in cancer spread could help point to new understanding and treatments.
Scientists have now demonstrated that fat tissue can be hijacked by tumor cells to launch itself and use adipomes, tiny extracellular vesicles released by fat tissue, to spread further into the body, outward from the breast and outward to other organs.
This discovery could provide new strategies to prevent disease progression at a much earlier stage than is currently possible. The findings were published in the Nature Portfolio journal NPJ Breast Cancer, published by senior author Dr. Jyoti Nagajyoti, a member of the Center for Discovery and Innovation (CDI) and Georgetown, Lombardy, and lead author Dr. Hariprasad Thangavel, a member of the Nagajyoti research team. The study was conducted in collaboration with Georgetown Lombardi’s Georgetown University Professor of Oncology, Dr. Robert Glaser, and other researchers on the research team.
”Results of this study demonstrate that the adipome is a potent and previously unrecognized regulator of the metastatic cascade in TNBC” writes the author.
“This study challenges the traditional view that adipocytes adjacent to tumors are passive lipid depots and instead reveals an active and dynamic role of adipocytes as key orchestrators of the breast TME (tumor microenvironment),” the researchers added.
What is known so far is that the “metastatic cascade” begins when cancer cells invade the stroma, the supporting tissues and blood vessels of the breast. Invadopodia are protein tentacles that protrude from cell membranes, lowering the body’s defenses and paving the way for cancer to spread. The process is well observed by scientists.
Nagajyothi’s team is currently investigating the early steps that lead to that process, with a particular focus on adipose tissue, a cellular messenger that initiates cancer growth cycles. They scrutinized each step of the process using human clinical samples obtained from the Hackensack Meridian Health (HMH) Network Biorepository and preclinical models. To do this, the team developed a first-of-its-kind purification technique that allows them to isolate pure adipomes from intact tissue, blood, and other body fluids. This has previously been a major technical hurdle that has hindered progress in this field. This unique method is so unique that it is currently the subject of a pending U.S. patent application by Hackensack Meridian Health (U.S. Patent Application No. 19/233,485). Both Mr. Nagajyoti and Mr. Thangavel are listed as inventors.
Adipomes convey a specific “lipid code” that reprograms cancer cells, activates stress response signaling, promotes protein synthesis, and upregulates important processes such as mitochondrial signaling and intercellular translation machinery. All of these together promote invadopodia in TNBC.
However, in the future there may be treatments that interrupt this process, perhaps turning the tide against this troublesome tumor type, the scientists wrote.
”Taken together, these findings establish that adipocyte-derived adipose tissue is a potent regulator of TNBC investigation and metastasis and reveal a previously unrecognized tumor-adipocyte signaling axis, which may provide new opportunities for therapeutic targeting.” they conclude.
Nagajyothi and her lab have long focused on adipose (adipose) tissue and its role in cancer (breast cancer, metastases, multiple myeloma), as well as diseases such as Chagas cardiomyopathy, pulmonary tuberculosis, COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 cardiomyopathy, as well as non-infectious diseases such as type 2 diabetes and lean diabetes.
sauce:
Hackensack Meridian Health
Reference magazines:
Thangavel, H. Others. (2026). Cancer-associated adipose tissue promotes invadopodia formation in triple-negative breast cancer and increases the likelihood of metastasis. npj breast cancer. DOI: 10.1038/s41523-026-00985-2. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41523-026-00985-2
