Hunter Kent W, Crawford Nigel P S, Alsarraj Jude
Laboratory of Cancer Biology and Genetics, Center for Cancer Research, NCI, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-4264, USA.
Breast Cancer Res. 2008;10 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):S2. doi: 10.1186/bcr1988.
Metastasis is an enormously complex process that remains to be a major problem in the management of cancer. The fact that cancer patients might develop metastasis after years or even decades from diagnosis of the primary tumor makes the metastatic process even more complex. Over the years many hypotheses were developed to try to explain the inefficiency of the metastatic process, but none of these theories completely explains the current biological and clinical observations. In this review we summarize some of the proposed models that were developed in attempt to understand the mechanisms of tumor dissemination and colonization as well as metastatic progression.
转移是一个极其复杂的过程，仍然是癌症治疗中的一个主要问题。癌症患者在原发性肿瘤诊断后的数年甚至数十年后可能发生转移，这一事实使得转移过程更加复杂。多年来，人们提出了许多假说，试图解释转移过程的低效性，但这些理论都没有完全解释当前的生物学和临床观察结果。在这篇综述中，我们总结了一些为试图理解肿瘤播散、定植以及转移进展机制而提出的模型。
