When war breaks out, power plants are attacked first along with military facilities like air defenses. The same goes for wars inside the human body. Cancer cells were found to hijack mitochondria, the energy organelles, from immune cells—the body's defense forces.
A team led by Derick Okwan-Duodu, a professor of pathology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, said on the 12th (local time) in the international journal Cell Metabolism that "cancer cells can steal mitochondria to evade attacks by immune cells and metastasize to lymph nodes where immune cells have gathered."
◇Stealing power plants to evade the body's immune response
The immune system is the body's defense force that blocks the growth and spread of cancer cells. But once a tumor settles in the body, it metastasizes to the lymph nodes, avoiding attacks from this defense force. In other words, the enemy sits down right in the defense force's headquarters. The team showed in mouse experiments that mitochondria are cancer cells' secret weapon.
Mitochondria are organelles in the cytoplasm that produce energy and, unlike the nucleus, have their own DNA. Scientists believe mitochondria were originally independent bacteria that entered animal cells, then evolved into energy organelles through symbiosis. Chloroplasts, the energy organelles in plant cells, are the same.
The researchers found that cancer cells implanted in mice steal mitochondria from various immune cells. Mitochondrial transfer occurred at the same rate regardless of whether cancer cells were implanted in lymph nodes or in the skin. Cancer cells, in effect, always seize the enemy's batteries or power plants first.
Cancer cells were found to gain at least two advantages by stealing mitochondria. When they lost their power plants, immune cells such as cytotoxic T cells and natural killer (NK) cells showed a sharp decline in their ability to identify and attack the enemy.
Conversely, cancer cells' camouflage to evade immune cells was strengthened. The body uses proteins called immune checkpoints to mark cells so that normal cells are not harmed while blocking invaders. Cancer cells that hijacked mitochondria disguised themselves with the immune checkpoint PD-L1.
Cancer cells also used the MHC I (major histocompatibility complex class I) protein. MHC I normally acts as an information officer, alerting immune cells to cancer cell features and inducing attack. Cancer cells that stole mitochondria regulated MHC I expression to avoid immune cell attacks.
◇Disrupting the immune system, not harvesting energy
Cancer cells' mitochondrial theft turned out to be aimed at disrupting communications rather than obtaining energy. Cancer cells that absorbed mitochondria began expressing genes linked to the type I interferon pathway, which relays immune signals.
Interferon signaling helped cancer cells evade immune cells and supported lymph node invasion. It is like eavesdropping on the defense force's communications and turning them to their advantage. The team found that suppressing interferon genes reduces cancer cells' ability to migrate to lymph nodes.
Cancer cells did not depend on mitochondria's original function. Even when the hijacked mitochondria could not produce ATP (adenosine triphosphate), the energy carrier molecule, cancer cells maintained their immune evasion. The researchers explained that this suggests the energy production of mitochondria is not a decisive factor in cancer cells' assault on lymph nodes.
Minna Roh-Johnson, a professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Utah, said, "This study is interesting in that most previous research assumed the role of stolen mitochondria was only to supply energy to cancer cells." In 2023, Roh-Johnson released findings in the international journal eLife that even if transferred mitochondria lose their energy metabolism function, they still promote cancer cell growth.
This is not the first time it has been shown that cancer cells steal mitochondria and then metastasize to those tissues. A joint team from the University of South Alabama and the University of Texas medical school published findings in Nature last year that neurons' mitochondria help brain metastasis of cancer.
Scientists believe targeting cancer cells' mitochondrial theft could yield ways to prevent metastasis. Cynthia Reinhart-King, a professor of bioengineering at Rice University, said, "This discovery shows that mitochondrial transplantation is a new mechanism that promotes cancer progression," and added, "Multiple labs are studying 'immunoengineering' to modify immune cells to counter cancer cells' immune evasion via mitochondrial theft."
The Stanford team is now identifying features that distinguish mitochondria across different cells and tracking mitochondrial activity inside cancer cells. They believe this can predict cancer cells' metastatic routes. Okwan-Duodu said, "Mitochondria stolen by cancer cells can determine where cancer survives and proliferates."
References
Cell Metabolism(2026), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2025.12.014
Nature(2025), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09176-8
eLife(2023), DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.85494