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Cancer

The complex seeds of metastasis

Nature volume 520, pages 298–299 (2015)Cite this article

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Analyses of prostate-cancer metastases reveal a complex cellular architecture, and show that secondary sites can be seeded by multiple cell populations derived from both the primary tumour and other metastases. See Letter p.353

How does cancer metastasize? The classic 'seed and soil' model, first proposed in 1889, posits that metastases arise from rare tumour cells, or seeds, that survive the steps required to escape the primary tumour and disseminate to secondary tissue sites, proliferating in tissues where there is a compatible microenvironment, the soil1. Subsequent experimental studies in prostate2 and other cancers3 have suggested that the metastatic seeds correspond to single disseminated cells. But in contrast to this simple viewpoint, two papers (one on page 353 of this issue4, and one in Nature Communications5) demonstrate that prostate-cancer metastases often display complex and dynamic patterns of evolution, starting from seeds that are composed of several different cells.

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Figure 1: Complex patterns of metastatic seeding.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Michael M. Shen is in the Departments of Medicine, of Genetics and Development, of Urology and of Systems Biology, and at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York 10032, USA.,

    Michael M. Shen

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  1. Michael M. Shen
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Correspondence to Michael M. Shen.

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Shen, M. The complex seeds of metastasis. Nature 520, 298–299 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14377

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