Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), a kind of oral cancer, affects some 30,000 Americans annually. It spreads through the lymphatic system and often has already metastasized by the time it’s diagnosed. The top image here, from a recent study in the American Journal of Pathology, is a healthy mouse tongue; the bottom is the swollen tongue of a mouse with OSCC. The cancerous tongue is overloaded with lymphatic vessels, appearing in blue and white, which help the tumor spread to the regional lymph nodes. The Bielenberg lab in Boston Children’s Hospital’s Vascular Biology Program is studying ways of blocking the progression of this and other cancers by inhibiting their spread through the lymphatic system. (Image: Bielenberg laboratory/Kristin Johnson)