Hold on for dear life

Some cells can't bear to leave home. As Steve Frisch (now at West Virginia University in Morgantown) and Hunter Francis reported in 1994, epithelial cells that lose touch with the extracellular matrix (ECM) kill themselves, a phenomenon the scientists dubbed “anoikis.” Although other researchers were skeptical at first, this type of apoptosis turned out to be an important mechanism for managing cell numbers, preventing abnormal growth, and squelching cancer.

Frisch and Francis weren't searching for new cell death pathways when they chanced on anoikis. The pair was scrutinizing a bizarre adenovirus protein called E1a that can restore tumor cells to normal behavior. The researchers observed that tumor cells “reverse transformed” by E1a die when they separate from the ECM. E1a also bestows some epithelial characteristics on the reverse transformed cells, so...