Abstract: |
Metastasis can be viewed as an evolutionary process, culminating in the prevalence of rare tumour cells that overcame stringent physiological barriers as they separated from their original environment and developmental fate. This phenomenon brings into focus long-standing questions about the stage at which cancer cells acquire metastatic abilities, the relationship of metastatic cells to their tumour of origin, the basis for metastatic tissue tropism, the nature of metastasis predisposition factors and, importantly, the identity of genes that mediate these processes. With knowledge cemented in decades of research into tumour-initiating events, current experimental and conceptual models are beginning to address the genetic basis for cancer colonization of distant organs. © 2007 Nature Publishing Group. |
Keywords: |
review; nonhuman; pancreas cancer; animals; mice; cancer susceptibility; genetic predisposition to disease; metastasis; ovary cancer; breast cancer; gene expression; gene expression profiling; models, biological; tumor markers, biological; lung cancer; carcinogenesis; mice, transgenic; models, theoretical; prostate cancer; sarcoma; cancer invasion; cancer genetics; chromosome aberration; oncogene; gene expression regulation, neoplastic; molecular evolution; neuroblastoma; oligonucleotide array sequence analysis; disease progression; colon cancer; glioblastoma; tumor cell; neoplasm metastasis; genomics; disease models, animal; genetic marker; linkage (genetics); functional genomics; myeloma; genes, neoplasm
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