A protein used by embryo cells during early development, and recently found in many different types of cancer, apparently serves as a switch regulating the spread of cancer, known as metastasis, report researchers at the University of California,...

A mechanism that cells use to group together and move around the body - called 'chase and run' - has been described for the first time by scientists at UCL. Published in Nature Cell Biology, the new study focuses on the process that occurs when...

The predominant cause of death in cancer patients is metastasis, the formation of secondary tumors in other organs like the brain, liver, and lungs. Cancer cells detach from the original primary tumor and reach a single cell or group of cells in...

By studying the roles two proteins, thrombospondin-1 and prosaposin, play in discouraging cancer metastasis, a trans-Atlantic research team has identified a five-amino acid fragment of prosaposin that significantly reduces metastatic spread in mouse...

The study reveals a surprising coordination between two fundamental body systems, the immune and the hematopoietic. The study has implications for the understanding of metastasis, because malignant stem cells involved in tumor formation could take...

Scientists have discovered that cancer cells send a signal that causes the lymphatic system to change, making the spread of tumors easier. Upon receiving the signal, lymphatic vessels add a protein to their surface, increasing the ability of cancer...

Researchers report that cancers physically alter cells in the lymphatic system – a network of vessels that transports and stores immune cells throughout the body – to promote the spread of disease, a process called metastasis.

Cancer is a complex disease, in which cells undergo a series of alterations, including changes in their architecture; an increase in their ability to divide, to survive and to invade new tissues or metastasis. A category of genes, called oncogenes,...

Cancer spread or metastasis can strike unprecedented fear in the minds of cancer patients. The "seed and the soil" hypothesis proposed by Stephen Paget in 1889 is now widely accepted to explain how cancer cells (seeds) are able to generate fertile...

Scientists have been the first to detect cancer cells that can initiate metastasis in the blood of breast cancer patients. Patients with large numbers of these cells found in their blood show a rather unfavorable disease progression. The...

A new system for isolating rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs) - living solid tumor cells found at low levels in the bloodstream - shows significant improvement over previously developed devices and does not require prior identification of...

Prostate cancer doesn't kill in the prostate - it's only once the disease travels to bone, lung, liver, etc. that it turns fatal. Previous studies have shown that loss of the protein E-Cadherin is essential for this metastasis. A University of...

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have discovered that a protein found in the cells surrounding pancreatic cancers play a role in the spread of the disease to other parts of the body. In a finding published in the...

Researchers have identified a critical protein role in the metastasis of melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer. Inhibition of the protein known as adenosine diphosphate ribosylation factor 6 (ARF6) reduces the spread of melanoma to the...

Studied for decades for their essential role in making proteins within cells, several amino acids known as tRNA synthetases were recently found to have an unexpected - and critical - additional role in cancer metastasis in a study conducted...

New results from a prospective clinical trial conducted in France show that children with low-risk retinoblastoma do not need postoperative (adjuvant) chemotherapy to prevent disease recurrence or metastasis; the results also suggest that certain...

Prostate cancer metastasis — Find out where prostate cancer spreads.

Cancer spread is a huge challenge for patients, doctors and researchers. No man is an island, and the same can be said of tumour cells. Previous posts in our ‘microenvironment’ series have discussed how the cells and structures around a tumour...

A process that normally occurs in developing embryos - the changing of one basic cell type into another - has also been suspected of playing a role in cancer metastasis. Now a study from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center researchers...

What to fear most if faced by a cancer diagnosis is the spread of the cancer to other parts of the body. This process called metastasis accounts for over 90% of cancer patient deaths and therefore is a strong focus for cancer researchers. ...