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Tumours grow their own nerve supply and use it: adrenaline and acetylcholine signal growth, gliomas form synapses with neurons, and nerve invasion causes pain. Old drugs (beta blockers) are being retested.
Pick a product above a diagram to see the nodes it hits and the escape routes below the block. Hover or tap any node or arrow for what it is; every node opens its target, glossary entry or the pathway page. Violet boxes are druggable targets.
A two-way telephone network: tumours can call the brain through sensory nerves, the brain can answer through autonomic nerves, and local nerve endings can change tumour and immune cells. Animal experiments can trace and interrupt individual lines, but human treatment evidence is still limited.
In plain words, then the glossary entries the stage rests on. Chapter 8, The tumour ecosystem: A tumour is a corrupted organ: cancer cells plus the fibroblasts, matrix, vessels, nerves, microbes and immune cells they recruit, and the signals they send to the rest of the body.
Tumours grow their own nerve supply and use it: adrenaline and acetylcholine signal growth, gliomas form synapses with neurons, and nerve invasion causes pain. Old drugs (beta blockers) are being retested.
Cancer neuroscience (brain-to-cancer and nerve-tumour signalling). Cancer neuroscience studies how the brain, peripheral nerves and tumours signal to one another. Mouse studies have mapped brain-to-cancer circuits in breast, bowel and lung cancer, but no such circuit is an established treatment target in people, and the findings do not mean that stress caused anyone's cancer.
The proteins and genes at this stage, with their role and how many products act on each. Listed players come from the atlas; drawn players sit as nodes in the diagrams above.
No target record is listed at this stage or drawn in its diagrams; the pathways above carry the mechanism.
Products grouped by the node they hit, most advanced first, with the cancers an approved product is linked to. Pick one above the diagram to see it light up.
No product in the corpus acts on a target at this stage yet.
What is not known at this stage: the atlas's own questions, the bottlenecks it bears on, and the ideas in the corpus that try to answer them.
Papers in the corpus tied to this stage's pathways, targets and terms, newest first.
src/data/mechanics-atlas.ts). Players, medicines, escape routes, tests, ideas and papers are resolved from the knowledge graph at build time through the stage's pathways, targets and terms, so every item here has its own page and sources. Where a section is missing, the corpus has no record tied to the stage yet. Nothing here is medical advice; see about and methodology. Stage 8.3 of 56.