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Cancer cells detach, invade, travel, and colonise other organs, the process responsible for most cancer deaths.
Activating invasion and metastasis is the hallmark by which cancer cells detach, invade, travel and colonise other organs, the process responsible for most cancer deaths. Its components are EMT programmes, matrix degradation, intravasation, dormancy and colonisation, laid out in The metastatic cascade, Epithelial-mesenchymal transition, Tumour dormancy and TGF-β signalling pathways and in the Disseminated tumour cells (DTCs) entry. No approved drug targets metastasis directly; the clinical tools are adjuvant therapy, MRD / molecular residual disease testing and metastasis-directed SBRT / SABR for Oligometastatic disease. Readers reach this hallmark from the Hallmarks of Cancer overview, the Metastasis and Invasive entries, and the invasion and intravasation pathway pages.
Showing the technology this term belongs to: MRD / molecular residual disease testing.
This is the reference for the mechanics behind invasion and metastasis and for why partial EMT states, rather than a full switch, are now thought to matter most in cancer. It also explains the appeal and the difficulty of drugging EMT, since its drivers are transcription factors.
EMT is the most cited explanation for how carcinomas invade and spread and for part of their drug resistance. This primer is the entry point for the field, and its framework informs current work on partial EMT states, circulating tumour cells and therapies aimed at the transition.
This is the paper that made EMT a cancer concept, cited by almost every metastasis study since. It set the research agenda that later produced the EMT stem cell link and current work on partial EMT states.
The hallmarks are the mental map most oncologists and researchers use to think about what cancer is and where drugs act. A newcomer can understand nearly every therapy as an attack on one hallmark: kinase inhibitors on proliferative signalling, checkpoint blockade on immune evasion, anti-VEGF drugs on angiogenesis.
Shares The Hallmarks of Cancer: six capabilities every tumour must acquire, Hallmarks of Cancer, Hallmarks of cancer as a synthesis of the theories and the tag hallmark.
Shares The Hallmarks of Cancer: six capabilities every tumour must acquire, Hallmarks of Cancer, Hallmarks of cancer as a synthesis of the theories and the tag hallmark.
Shares The Hallmarks of Cancer: six capabilities every tumour must acquire, Hallmarks of Cancer, Hallmarks of cancer as a synthesis of the theories and the tag hallmark.
Shares Hallmarks of Cancer, Hallmarks of cancer as a synthesis of the theories, Epithelial-mesenchymal transition & drug efflux and the tag hallmark.
Shares The Hallmarks of Cancer: six capabilities every tumour must acquire, Hallmarks of Cancer, Hallmarks of cancer as a synthesis of the theories and the tag hallmark.
Shares The Hallmarks of Cancer: six capabilities every tumour must acquire, Hallmarks of Cancer, Hallmarks of cancer as a synthesis of the theories and the tag hallmark.
Shares The Hallmarks of Cancer: six capabilities every tumour must acquire, Hallmarks of Cancer and the tag hallmark.
Shares Hallmarks of Cancer, Hallmarks of cancer as a synthesis of the theories, TGF-β signalling and the tag hallmark.