Genomics of metastatic progression

Excerpt

Metastatic potential of transformed cells is the hallmark of malignancy and is the basis of pathological diagnosis of tumors. Characterization of the metastatic potential of cancer cells is still a hot topic in cancer research despite of a pletora of studies published in the past decade. Although these studies provided meaningful information on the basic alterations at expression levels, these data are frequently controversial. Controversies exist between cellular systems, preclinical models and clinicopathological studies. The data indicate that in vitro systems are dependent on the effects of the specific artificial conditions, that preclinical models are affected significantly by the „foreign” stroma signatures of the host and that the clinicopathological studies are greatly dependent on the histopathological specifics of the cancer. Furthermore, all these variabilities are further complicated by the specificities of the array platforms used throughout these studies. …