Palmitic acid: Enabling the tumor's nerves.

Diet can influence tumor aggressiveness. Recently in Nature, a study by Pascual et al. provided evidence that dietary palmitic acid induces an epigenetic memory by modulating particular histone methylation marks in cancer cells. This allows cancer cells to activate extracellular matrix secretion from Schwann cells of the tumor microenvironment, which ultimately potentiates metastasis initiation.