Open AccessThe importance of developing therapies targeting the biological spectrum of metastatic disease
Author(s) -
Andries Zijlstra,
Ariana K. von Lersner,
Dihua Yu,
Lucia Borrello,
Madeleine J. Oudin,
Yibin Kang,
Erik Sahai,
Barbara Fingleton,
Ulrike Stein,
Thomas R. Cox,
John T. Price,
Yukio Kato,
Alana L. Welm,
Julio A. AguirreGhiso
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
clinical and experimental metastasis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.269
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1573-7276
pISSN - 0262-0898
DOI - 10.1007/s10585-019-09972-3
Subject(s) - surgical oncology , medicine , disease , hematology , broad spectrum , intensive care medicine , oncology , chemistry , combinatorial chemistry
Great progress has been made in cancer therapeutics. However, metastasis remains the predominant cause of death from cancer. Importantly, metastasis can manifest many years after initial treatment of the primary cancer. This is because cancer cells can remain dormant before forming symptomatic metastasis. An important question is whether metastasis research should focus on the early treatment of metastases, before they are clinically evident ("overt"), or on developing treatments to stop overt metastasis (stage IV cancer). In this commentary we want to clarify why it is important that all avenues of treatment for stage IV patients are developed. Indeed, future treatments are expected to go beyond the mere shrinkage of overt metastases and will include strategies that prevent disseminated tumor cells from emerging from dormancy.