When patients are diagnosed with cancer, they want to know whether their
disease is local or has spread to other locations. Cancer spreads by
metastasis, the ability of cancer cells to penetrate into lymphatic and blood
vessels, circulate through the bloodstream, and then invade and grow in normal
tissues elsewhere.
In large measure, it is this ability to spread to other tissues and organs that
makes cancer a potentially life-threatening disease, so there is great interest
in understanding what makes metastasis possible for a cancerous tumor.
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