Cancer cells have one relentless goal: to grow and divide. While most stick together within the original tumor, some rogue cells break away to traverse to distant organs. There, they can lie dormant—undetectable and not dividing—for years, like landmines waiting to go off.

Cancer cells have one relentless goal: to grow and divide. While most stick together within the original tumor, some rogue cells break away to traverse to distant organs. There, they can lie dormant—undetectable and not dividing—for years, like landmines waiting to go off…

This awakening of dormant cancer cells, they’ve discovered, isn’t a spontaneous process. Instead, the wake-up call comes from the inflamed tissue surrounding the cells. One trigger for this inflammation is bleomycin, a common chemotherapy drug that can scar and thicken lung tissue.

“The inflammation jolts the dormant cancer cells awake,” Weinberg says. “Once awakened, they start multiplying again, seeding new life-threatening tumors in the body.”