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Cancer

Organ-seeking vesicles

Nature volume 527, pages 312–314 (2015)Cite this article

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An analysis reveals that cancer cells remotely prepare distant sites for tumour spread in an organ-specific manner, by deploying organ-seeking extracellular vesicles. See Article p.329

The metastatic dissemination of cancer cells from their site of origin through the bloodstream to distant organs is a major cause of cancer-related deaths. This process is not random1; instead, certain populations of cancer cells preferentially seek out and colonize specific organs2, under the control of a range of molecular programs3. Such homing implicitly involves interactions between cancer cells that escape the primary tumour, sometimes known as seeds, and the microenvironment, or 'soil', of target sites1. But less intuitive is the discovery by Hoshino et al.4, described on page 329 of this issue, that seeds can influence the soil before their arrival, sending out extracellular vesicles called exosomes that precondition specific organs for metastatic invasion.

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Figure 1: Paving the way for organ-specific metastasis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Janusz Rak is in the Department of Pediatrics, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H4A 3J1, Canada, and at the Research Institute of McGill University Health Centre, Montreal Children's Hospital.,

    Janusz Rak

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  1. Janusz Rak
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Correspondence to Janusz Rak.

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Rak, J. Organ-seeking vesicles. Nature 527, 312–314 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature15642

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