Tumor cells caught in the act of invading: their strategy for enhanced cell motility.
Invasion of neighboring extracellular matrix tissue, the lymphatic system and blood vessels is a key element of tumor cell metastasis in many epithelial tumors. Understanding the cell motility pathways that contribute to invasion can provide new approaches and targets for anticancer therapy. The recent convergence of technologies for expression profiling and intravital imaging has revealed the identities of some of the genes that contribute to motility and chemotaxis of cancer cells in tumors. In particular, the genes encoding a minimum motility machine are coordinately upregulated in tumor cells collected by an in vivo invasion assay. These results support a "tumor microenvironment invasion model" and provide new target opportunities for cancer therapy.
Wang
Weigang
W
Department of Anatomy and Structural Biology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY 10461, USA.
Goswami
Sumanta
S
Sahai
Erik
E
Wyckoff
Jeffrey B
JB
Segall
Jeffrey E
JE
Condeelis
John S
JS
D000818:Animals; D002465:Cell Movement; D002633:Chemotaxis; D015972:Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D009361:Neoplasm Invasiveness; D009362:Neoplasm Metastasis; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology*; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis