Cancer cells spread more aggressively at night, when the body’s internal clock shifts their behaviour. This matters because metastasis—the escape of tumour cells into the bloodstream to seed new tumours—causes most cancer deaths. The researcher discovered that circulating tumour cells (CTCs) surge in number at night, and that metastases form predominantly during sleep. This finding challenges the assumption that cancer spread is constant, and it exposes a critical gap: liquid biopsies, which detect CTCs in blood to monitor cancer progression, are typically taken without regard to time of day, potentially missing the most informative window. If this research succeeds, it could transform how and when cancer is detected and treated. Doctors might schedule liquid biopsies for night-time hours to catch the highest CTC counts. Chemotherapy or immunotherapy could be timed to disrupt the nightly metastatic window, boosting effectiveness. The work is fundamental science—uncovering how the circadian rhythm controls cell escape and tumour formation—but it points directly toward a practical shift: time-stamped cancer care. Understanding why metastasis favours sleep could also reveal new drug targets to block spread entirely.
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Metastasis, the spread of cancer cells to other parts of the body, is the main reason for cancer-related deaths. I have recently made the remarkable discovery that metastasis is regulated by the circadian rhythm, an internal clock that our body has developed to synchronise and adjust its functions to the daily changes of the environment. I found that the number of Circulating Tumour Cells (CTCs) - cancer cells that escape from the tumour, enter the blood circulation, travel through the body and form new tumours in different organs - fluctuates throughout the day with increased numbers detected at night. I also discovered that CTCs form metastases predominantly during sleep. Together, these findings suggest that the circadian rhythm plays a critical role in cancer spread and could affect the results of the liquid biopsy, a new test that analyses the peripheral blood of a person to check for cancer progression and relapse. Therefore, the goal of this research proposal is to investigate how time controls metastasis and use this knowledge to develop improved approaches to predict metastasis and treat cancer. Specifically, the questions that I will ask are the following: 1) is the time when CTCs escape from the tumour similar for all cancer types? 2) why metastasis is formed at a specific time of the day and how can we block it? 3) will therapies be more effective if we administer them at specific times of the day? By using this new, time-defined approach to study metastasis, I am confident that this research proposal is highly likely to make significant contributions to find novel ways to treat cancer and help more cancer patients survive.
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