Bone metastasis as a non-stochastic process.
Bone metastasis may be considered a non-stochastic process, since the blood flow in bone is lower than that in other organs and most cancers do not have a tendency to metastasize to bone in in vivo experiments. Furthermore, the experimental model of bone metastasis, based on the ligation of major venous flow, can not explain the wide-spread bone metastasis which is commonly observed in clinical cases. These observations may be explained by the hypothesis that tumor cells have a phenotype for translocating to specific tissues and that tumor cell growth is controlled by the microenvironmental factors in situ.
Chigira
M
M
Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Gunma University School of Medicine, Japan.
Noda
K
K
Watanabe
H
H
D000818:Animals; D001775:Blood Circulation; D001859:Bone Neoplasms / Q000556:secondary*; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D009362:Neoplasm Metastasis