New drugs could restrain or prevent metastasis.

The epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a cell-biological program for remodeling tissues during embryogenesis. Later in life, cancer cells take advantage of this normal program to execute most of the steps of the invasion-metastasis cascade.

But until now we haven't understood how the final step occurs. How can disseminated cancer cells found the new colonies we call metastases? They would need to have the self-renewal ability of stem cells, a trait most cancer cells within a primary tumor lack.

We have discovered that the EMT program that enables a primary tumor to disseminate cancer cells also confers on them many properties of self-renewing stem cells, empowering them to found life-threatening metastases. This insight offers the prospect that new drugs could specifically target these cells, thereby restraining or preventing metastasis.

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- Robert Weinberg, Ph.D.
Member of Stemgent Scientific Advisory Board

For more information, see "The Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition Generates Cells with Properties of Stem Cells" Mani et al. Cell 133, 704-715, May 16, 2008.