title: Metastatic colonization by circulating tumour cells.
abstract: Metastasis is the main cause of death in people with cancer. To colonize distant organs, circulating tumour cells must overcome many obstacles through mechanisms that we are only now starting to understand. These include infiltrating distant tissue, evading immune defences, adapting to supportive niches, surviving as latent tumour-initiating seeds and eventually breaking out to replace the host tissue. They make metastasis a highly inefficient process. However, once metastases have been established, current treatments frequently fail to provide durable responses. An improved understanding of the mechanistic determinants of such colonization is needed to better prevent and treat metastatic cancer.
authors.affiliation: Cancer Biology and Genetics Program, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York 10065, USA.
authors.forename: Joan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Massagué
authors.affiliation: Cancer Biology and Genetics Program, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York 10065, USA.|Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna Biocenter, 1030 Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Anna C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Obenauf
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D049109:Cell Proliferation; D002470:Cell Survival; D006801:Humans; D009362:Neoplasm Metastasis / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000276:immunology / Q000473:pathology*; D009360:Neoplastic Cells, Circulating / Q000187:drug effects / Q000276:immunology / Q000473:pathology*; D009928:Organ Specificity; D055153:Stem Cell Niche; D059016:Tumor Microenvironment / Q000276:immunology