Related topics: cancer · cancer cells

Breakthrough uses light to manipulate cell movement

One of the biggest challenges in scientists' quest to develop new and better treatments for cancer is gaining a better understanding of how and why cancer spreads. Recent breakthroughs have uncovered how different cellular ...

Nanodiamonds can block tumor metastasis in mice, study shows

Nanodiamonds are 2–8 nm carbon nanoparticles, which can be easily functionalized with various chemical groups like carboxylic groups or drugs. Previous research has shown that actively dividing cells are more likely to ...

How cellular fingertips may help cells 'speak' to each other

What if you found out that you could heal using only a finger? It sounds like science fiction, reminiscent of the 1982 movie "E.T." Well, it turns out that your body's own cells can do something similarly unexpected. Researchers ...

Non-invasive imaging method spots cancer at the molecular level

Researchers for the first time have combined a powerful microscopy technique with automated image analysis algorithms to distinguish between healthy and metastatic cancerous tissue without relying on invasive biopsies or ...

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Metastasis

Metastasis (Greek: displacement, μετά=next + στάσις=placement, plural: metastases), or Metastatic disease, sometimes abbreviated mets, is the spread of a disease from one organ or part to another non-adjacent organ or part. Only malignant tumor cells and infections have the established capacity to metastasize; however, this is recently reconsidered by new research.

Cancer cells can break away, leak, or spill from a primary tumor, enter lymphatic and blood vessels, circulate through the bloodstream, and settle down to grow within normal tissues elsewhere in the body. Metastasis is one of three hallmarks of malignancy (contrast benign tumors). Most tumors and other neoplasms can metastasize, although in varying degrees (e.g., glioma and basal cell carcinoma rarely metastasize).

When tumor cells metastasize, the new tumor is called a secondary or metastatic tumor, and its cells are like those in the original tumor. This means, for example, that, if breast cancer metastasizes to the lungs, the secondary tumor is made up of abnormal breast cells, not of abnormal lung cells. The tumor in the lung is then called metastatic breast cancer, not lung cancer.

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