Bill Ruben, Christofori Gerhard
Department of Biomedicine, University of Basel, 4058 Basel, Switzerland.
Department of Biomedicine, University of Basel, 4058 Basel, Switzerland.
FEBS Lett. 2015 Jun 22;589(14):1577-87. doi: 10.1016/j.febslet.2015.05.002. Epub 2015 May 12.
Although major progress has been achieved in treating breast cancer patients, metastatic breast cancer still remains a deadly disease. A full understanding of the process of systemic cancer cell dissemination is therefore critical to develop next generation therapies. A plethora of experimental data points toward a central role of an epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) in the multistep cascade of metastasis formation. However, in patients the data are based on correlative studies which often, but not always, tie the expression of EMT markers to cancer invasion, metastasis and poor clinical outcome. Moreover, the notion that cancer cells are able to switch between different modes of migration asks for a thorough review of the actual relevance of EMT in cancer metastasis.
尽管在治疗乳腺癌患者方面已取得重大进展，但转移性乳腺癌仍然是一种致命疾病。因此，全面了解系统性癌细胞扩散过程对于开发下一代治疗方法至关重要。大量实验数据表明上皮-间质转化（EMT）在转移形成的多步骤级联反应中起核心作用。然而，在患者中，数据基于相关性研究，这些研究常常（但并非总是）将EMT标志物的表达与癌症侵袭、转移及不良临床结局联系起来。此外，癌细胞能够在不同迁移模式之间切换这一观点要求对EMT在癌症转移中的实际相关性进行全面审视。
