EACR Travel Fellowship Awards

A key characteristic of malignant cancers is the ability to overcome microenvironmental controls by host, invade tissue, and reach distant sites of the body to form metastases. Cancer cells can induce profound changes in the neighbouring tissue, which in turn provides an environment that favours local tumour growth, metastatic spreading, and contributes to drug response. The host microenvironment within a growing solid tumour, referred to as the tumour stroma, contains, in addition to a variety of matrix components, a rich cell population such as fibroblasts, smooth muscle cells, endothelial cells, dendritic cells, macrophages, and other inflammatory cells.