title: Fusion of bone marrow-derived cells with cancer cells: metastasis as a secondary disease in cancer.
abstract: This perspective article highlights the leukocyte-cancer cell hybrid theory as a mechanism for cancer metastasis. Beginning from the first proposal of the theory more than a century ago and continuing today with the first proof for this theory in a human cancer, the hybrid theory offers a unifying explanation for metastasis. In this scenario, leukocyte fusion with a cancer cell is a secondary disease superimposed upon the early tumor, giving birth to a new, malignant cell with a leukocyte-cancer cell hybrid epigenome.
authors.affiliation: Department of Dermatology and the Yale Cancer Center, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8059, USA. john.pawelek@yale.edu.
authors.forename: John M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Pawelek
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001854:Bone Marrow Cells / Q000166:cytology / Q000473:pathology; D002459:Cell Fusion; D006801:Humans; D006822:Hybrid Cells / Q000473:pathology*; D009362:Neoplasm Metastasis; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology*; D014411:Neoplastic Stem Cells / Q000473:pathology*