Metastasis Requires Combined Effort of Several Genes

Researchers looking into the problem of how cancer spreads within the body have found that metastasis of breast cancer into the bone marrow requires a specific subset of genes that are different from the genes responsible for the formation of the initial tumor.

Investigators at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (New York, NY, USA; www.mskcc.org) worked with both a genetically engineered line of poorly metastatic mice tumor cells and with human breast cancer cells from a patient with metastatic disease. In their study published in the June 2003 issue of Cancer Cell, they described a group of genes including interleukin-11 and CTGF (connective tissue growth factor) that encode osteolytic and angiogenic factors, which act cooperatively to cause osteolytic metastasis.

Senior author Dr. Joan Massagué, program chairman of cell biology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, explained, "This means that the metastatic gene signature defines and forms a violent society, a large group of cells in a tumor that are competent to become metastatic cells. In and of themselves, these genes may not be mediators of metastases. Our finding is that above and beyond the genetic signature that has created this tumor, there is a toolbox of overexpressed genes that the cancer cell will need and that will be the mediators for the cell to thrive in the bone marrow.”




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