Oncology & Cancer

Liver metastasis, metabolism, and a therapeutic conundrum

A new study led by researchers at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center (HICCC) has identified a crucial factor that can drive tumor cells to spread to the liver. The work, which is published in the current issue ...

Oncology & Cancer

How does cancer spread to other parts of the body?

All cancers begin in a single organ or tissue, such as the lungs or skin. When these cancers are confined in their original organ or tissue, they are generally more treatable.

Oncology & Cancer

YBX1 as a key regulator of mitochondrial pyruvate uptake

Cancer metastasis is a crucial area in cancer research that directly affects patient survival and treatment outcomes. Cancer cells often undergo adaptive metabolic changes during metastasis from in situ to distant organs ...

Oncology & Cancer

Citrullination: A key player in cancer spread and control

Cancer metastasis is the process by which cancerous cells spread from the primary tumor site to other regions of the body. Despite advancements in cancer research, the factors driving the selective spread of cancer to specific ...

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Metastasis

Metastasis (Greek: displacement, μετά=next + στάσις=placement, plural: metastases), or Metastatic disease, sometimes abbreviated mets, is the spread of a disease from one organ or part to another non-adjacent organ or part. Only malignant tumor cells and infections have the established capacity to metastasize; however, this is recently reconsidered by new research.

Cancer cells can break away, leak, or spill from a primary tumor, enter lymphatic and blood vessels, circulate through the bloodstream, and settle down to grow within normal tissues elsewhere in the body. Metastasis is one of three hallmarks of malignancy (contrast benign tumors). Most tumors and other neoplasms can metastasize, although in varying degrees (e.g., glioma and basal cell carcinoma rarely metastasize).

When tumor cells metastasize, the new tumor is called a secondary or metastatic tumor, and its cells are like those in the original tumor. This means, for example, that, if breast cancer metastasizes to the lungs, the secondary tumor is made up of abnormal breast cells, not of abnormal lung cells. The tumor in the lung is then called metastatic breast cancer, not lung cancer.

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