title: Adaptive Stress Responses During Tumor Metastasis and Dormancy.
abstract: To survive inhospitable environments, tumor cells are forced to remodel their signaling pathways by altering transcription, translation, and post-translational modifications. This adaptation is regulated in a spatial and temporal manner and gives rise to individual tumor cells with distinct gene expression and metabolic signatures. Such phenotypic heterogeneity is the result of tumor cell plasticity, which-together with the genetic background of the tumor-determines whether cells resist environmental stress, enter dormancy, or metastasize. This review summarizes our understanding of how tumor cells exploit the cellular stress response to balance proliferation, differentiation, and survival signals, and to remodel local and distant environments. We focus in particular on tumor metastasis, which is the greatest impediment to clinical management of cancers today.
authors.affiliation: Tumor Initiation and Maintenance Program, NCI designated Cancer Center, Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, La Jolla, CA, 92037.
authors.forename: Daniela
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Senft
authors.affiliation: Tumor Initiation and Maintenance Program, NCI designated Cancer Center, Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, La Jolla, CA, 92037.
authors.forename: Ze Ev A
authors.initials: ZE
authors.lastname: Ronai
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000066670:Cell Plasticity / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D009362:Neoplasm Metastasis / Q000473:pathology; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D013312:Stress, Physiological; D056811:Unfolded Protein Response
keywords: Tumor cell plasticity; dormancy; metastasis; unfolded protein response (UPR)