Damaged DNA can spread between human cells. What could that mean for cancer?
Recent research has revealed that damaged DNA can transfer between human cells through intercellular structures. This discovery raises important questions about the implications for cancer development and cell behavior. Scientists are exploring how this phenomenon may influence the spread of genetic abnormalities.
- ▪Damaged DNA can escape from one human cell and infiltrate another.
- ▪The DNA travels via tubelike structures connecting neighboring cells.
- ▪This transfer could potentially lead to the spread of cancerous traits between cells.
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Record
| Original publisher | Science News |
| Canonical URL | https://www.sciencenews.org/article/damaged-dna-spread-nanotubes-cells-cancer |
| Publication time | Tue, 19 May 2026 15:12:58 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-19T15:14:57.682Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-19T15:14:57.682Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | 3I-7oc6f5DwE |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
News Health & Medicine Damaged DNA can spread between human cells. What could that mean for cancer? The fragments travel along wispy threads connecting cells Fragments of DNA (red oval, center) can transfer from one cell to another via intercellular highways (green thread). Peter Ly/E.G. Maurais et al./Cell 2026 By Meghan Rosen 11 seconds ago Share this:Share Share via email (Opens in new window) Email Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit Share on X (Opens in new window) X Print (Opens in new window) Print Damaged DNA can escape from one human cell and infiltrate another. Like prisoners tunneling out of jail, this DNA travels via tubelike structures between neighboring cells, scientists report May 19 in Cell.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Science News.
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