A French-Danish team (Jacques Monod Institute — FBI Paris Centre Node & Niels Bohr Institute) has recently highlighted a new regulator of cell competition: cadherins!

How it works?

These proteins, which promote cohesion between cells, appear to facilitate the transmission of mechanical stress from one cell to another. The researchers demonstrated that colonies of cells capable of transmitting these mechanical forces are more likely to “win the cellular competition” compared to other colonies with similar characteristics but fewer cadherins — and therefore less ability to share the stress caused by mechanical forces.

These new findings open up new perspectives for understanding how cells compete within healthy tissues, and also during the proliferation of cancer cells.

As the journalists at Le Monde nicely put it: “unity is strength”!

Want to know more? Read the article here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-025-02150-9