Could a Leuven discovery open a new route to treating liver metastases?

Researchers at the VIB-KU Leuven

Organisation

KU Leuven

University whose researchers helped identify the metastatic pathway.

Why it matters

University whose researchers helped identify the metastatic pathway.

About

De Katholieke Universiteit Leuven of KU Leuven is een katholieke universiteit, waarvan de hoofdcampus gevestigd is in de Belgische stad Leuven. De KU Leuven biedt ook opleidingen aan op haar campussen te Brussel, Antwerpen, Gent, Kortrijk, Brugge, Geel, Diepenbeek, Sint-Katelijne-Waver en Aalst. Zij is met 22.622 personeelsleden en 65.655 studenten niet alleen de grootste Nederlandstalige universiteit, maar ook de grootste universiteit van de Lage Landen.

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Place

Leuven

Flemish city serving as the study’s principal research hub.

Why it matters

Flemish city serving as the study’s principal research hub.

About

Leuven, also called Louvain, is the capital and largest city of the province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. A Dutch-speaking municipality, it is located about 25 kilometres east of Brussels. The municipality itself comprises the sub-municipalities of Heverlee, Kessel-Lo, Leuven proper, Wilsele, and Wijgmaal and parts of Haasrode and Korbeek-Lo. It is the eighth largest city in Belgium, with more than 100,244 inhabitants.

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For people receiving cancer care in Belgium, the immediate message is therefore one of scientific progress rather than a change in therapy. The peer-reviewed study, published in Nature Metabolism, identifies a potential drug target, not an approved medicine or clinical protocol. VIB and KU Leuven explicitly caution that further research is required before the findings can produce a therapy.

The study was led by doctoral researcher Anke Vandekeere and professor Sarah-Maria Fendt. Their team found that metastatic cells use an enzyme called DHHC17 to attach palmitate to laminin-511, a protein involved in the environment surrounding cells. This modification stabilises the protein and enables cancer cells to release it. According to the paper, laminin-511 then reduces the ability of neutrophils—white blood cells that can kill cancer cells—to attack the metastases.

When the researchers reduced DHHC17 activity in mouse models, metastatic growth in the liver declined, provided neutrophils were present. Restoring laminin-511 or blocking neutrophil degranulation reversed that effect, supporting the proposed chain of cause and effect. The experiments covered models of breast and colorectal cancer and distinguished liver metastases from those growing in the lung.

The work also drew on human material. Nature Metabolism records contributions from UZ Leuven’s UPTIDER tissue-donation programme and from Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, alongside collaborators in Barcelona, Düsseldorf and London. Those samples helped the researchers test whether features observed in laboratory models were relevant to human disease, but they did not amount to a clinical trial showing that DHHC17 inhibition is safe or effective in patients.

That distinction matters because liver metastases are not a single disease. They are secondary tumours originating elsewhere—commonly in organs such as the colon or breast—and treatment depends on the primary cancer, the number and position of lesions, disease elsewhere in the body and the patient’s overall condition. A 2025 review in the European Journal of Cancer describes surgery, thermal ablation and stereotactic radiotherapy as complementary established options for selected patients, generally alongside systemic treatments chosen by multidisciplinary cancer teams.

The Leuven result fits a broader shift in oncology. Researchers increasingly study not only mutations inside a tumour but also the tumour microenvironment: the surrounding nutrients, structural proteins and immune cells that can help or hinder cancer. Fendt’s group argues that the liver’s distinctive metabolic and relatively immune-tolerant environment gives metastatic cells opportunities that may not exist in the same form in other organs.

There is a European dimension, although the discovery remains principally a Belgian-led biomedical story. The European Commission’s Cancer Mission makes tumour-host interactions, immune-centred treatments and equitable access to personalised care explicit research priorities. The Leuven project also received support from Belgian funders including the Research Foundation Flanders, KU Leuven, the Foundation against Cancer, Kom op tegen Kanker, the Baillet Latour Fund and the Francqui Foundation, as well as European and international funding.

The next task is to determine whether DHHC17, laminin-511 or another point in the pathway can be targeted selectively without disrupting essential functions in healthy tissue. Researchers will need suitable drug candidates, toxicity studies and stronger validation in human tumours before clinical trials can be considered. Until those stages are completed, patients should not alter treatment or diet on the basis of this study; the presence of palmitate in the mechanism does not establish that avoiding a particular food will treat existing metastases.