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Cancer metastasis occurs when cancer has spread to different parts of the body & nbsp | & nbspPhoto: & nbspGetty Images
Washington DC .: Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of Kansas Cancer Center identified four features of cancer metastasis: motility and invasion, modulation of the microenvironment, plasticity, and colonization capacity. Cancer metastasis – when cancer has spread to different parts of the body from its starting point – is thought to be responsible for 90% of all cancer deaths.
Researcher Douglas Hurst conducted a literature review of more than 10,000 publications on metastasis and published the results of this research in Cancer Research of the American Association for Cancer Research. The cancer of the metastasis spread to different parts of the body from which it began. It is thought that it is causing 90% of cancer deaths.
Metastases can be very difficult to treat. Virtually all types of cancer can form metastatic tumors. The most common sites of cancers to metastasize include the brain, bones, lungs and liver. Other areas include the adrenal gland, lymph nodes, skin and other organs.
By defining the unique properties of metastatic cancer cells, Hurst said he hoped to provide a conceptual framework to accelerate the discovery of treatment strategies.
"Our attempts to identify the first principles underlying the metastatic process hopefully provide a way to simplify the processes essential to the development of all metastases," said the review authors.
According to the authors, defining the characteristics of metastases has been complicated by the heterogeneity of tumor cells and by the myriad interactions with other molecules and cells throughout the process.
Hurst and Danny Welch, another researcher, said they hoped that refining the definitions and synthesizing various data would identify the vulnerabilities that metastasis researchers could exploit to try to treat cancer metastasis.
"Metastasis is a very complex pathological process, and increased specificity in defining the underlying principles is important for better understanding and interpreting the literature in order to progress in the development of therapeutic interventions," Hurst explained.
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