Cancer Cell Invasion

This activity explores an image of tumor cells invading muscle tissue, which serves as a phenomenon for learning about cancer, mutations, and cell division.

Tumor cells can invade and colonize other tissues through a process called metastasis, which begins with “leader” cells breaking off from the tumor. Leader cells are both genetically and behaviorally different from the main “body” of the tumor, and they guide other tumor cells into invading healthy tissue. This image shows cells in a breast tumor (green with leader cells shown in pink) invading the surrounding muscle tissue (blue).

The “Educator Materials” document includes background information and implementation suggestions for using the image as a phenomenon. The “Student Handout” includes the image and background information.

The “Resource Google Folder” link directs to a Google Drive folder of resource documents in the Google Docs format. Not all downloadable documents for the resource may be available in this format. The Google Drive folder is set as “View Only”; to save a copy of a document in this folder to your Google Drive, open that document, then select File → “Make a copy.” These documents can be copied, modified, and distributed online following the Terms of Use listed in the “Details” section below, including crediting BioInteractive.

Image by Kevin Cheung, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center