A joint team of Chinese and US researchers has identified a specific group of highly adaptable tumor cells that act as a central hub driving lung cancer progression, China’s state-run Xinhua News reported on Sunday.

A study published this week in Nature, led by researchers from Huazhong Agricultural University in China and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, presents a new strategy for targeting cancers that evade treatment.

According to Yan Yan, a corresponding author, cancer’s ability to evade treatment and recur is partly due to tumor cells switching between states to survive attacks from drugs.

To track these changes, the team developed a genetic reporting system in mouse models of lung cancer, effectively adding “trackable chips” and “precision clearance switches” to the tumor cells.

This enabled them to identify a “high-plasticity cell state” (HPCS), which acts like a “central traffic hub” in the tumor, directing cells along different growth paths and allowing others to return to an adaptable state.

The study showed that eliminating HPCS cells in early tumors prevented malignancy, and targeting them in established tumors slowed cancer growth. Removing HPCS cells also reduced resistance to chemotherapy and targeted drugs.

Combining this approach with standard treatments almost completely eliminated tumors in the models. The researchers suggest that targeting this flexible cell state could be a promising strategy for fighting multiple cancers.