Tumor Dissemination: An EMT Affair

EMT and Dissemination Precede Pancreatic Tumor Formation

Metastasis is the leading cause of cancer-associated death but has been difficult to study because it involves a series of rare, stochastic events. To capture these events, we developed a sensitive method to tag and track pancreatic epithelial cells in a mouse model of pancreatic cancer. Tagged cells invaded and entered the bloodstream unexpectedly early, before frank malignancy could be detect...

EMT and tumor metastasis

EMT and MET comprise the processes by which cells transit between epithelial and mesenchymal states, and they play integral roles in both normal development and cancer metastasis. This article reviews these processes and the molecular pathways that contribute to them. First, we compare embryogenesis and development with cancer metastasis. We then discuss the signaling pathways and the different...

A community affair in the tumor microenvironment

Tumor Budding: The Name is EMT. Partial EMT.

Tumor budding is a histological phenomenon encountered in various cancers, whereby individual malignant cells and/or small clusters of malignant cells are seen in the tumor stroma. Postulated to be mirror epithelial-mesenchymal transition, tumor budding has been associated with poor cancer outcomes. However, the vast heterogeneity in its exact definition, methodology of assessment, and patient ...

An affair of the heart.

In 1950, patients with Hodgkin lymphoma had a median survival time of 4 years and a 5-year relative survival rate of 29% (1). Since the introduction of radiation therapy and chemotherapy for Hodgkin lymphoma in the 1960s and 1970s, the 5-year relative survival rate is more than 85% (2), and these patients can now expect a long lymphoma-free life. However, the price for this phenomenal success h...