Is cancer a disease of self-seeding?

Nature Medicine volume 12, pages875–878(2006)Cite this article

The high cell density, rapid growth rate and large population size of cancer are conventionally attributed to a pathologically high ratio of cell production to cell death. Yet these features might also or instead result from inappropriate cell movement, already understood to underlie invasion and metastasis. This integrating concept could induce a broadening of our existing anticancer pharmacopoeia, which, with mitosis as its predominant target, is now seldom curative.

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Figure 1: The self-seeding concept of cancer growth and metastasis.
Figure 2: Gompertzian growth curves.

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Acknowledgements

The authors express their appreciation to A.B. Olshen for his review of mathematical details, to T.J. Riley for drawing the figures, and to C. Pearce for editing the manuscript. We also acknowledge with gratitude discussions with our principal P01-CA94060-04 colleagues—R. Benezra, M. Jasin, S. Larson, M. Moynahan, N. Rosen and H. Varmus—and with J. Bromberg, G. Gupta, C. Hudis, R. Kurtz, A. Minn, D. Spriggs and C. Van Poznak.

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Affiliations

  1. Departments of Medicine, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the Weill College of Medicine of Cornell University, New York, 10021, New York, USA

    Larry Norton

  2. Cancer Biology and Genetics Program and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, 10021, New York, USA

    Joan Massagué

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Correspondence to Larry Norton.

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Norton, L., Massagué, J. Is cancer a disease of self-seeding?. Nat Med 12, 875–878 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0806-875

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