Bone metastases articles from across Nature Portfolio

A potential translational strategy to treat brain metastases is the induction or maintenance of proliferative dormancy in tumor cells. A new study shows that dormancy in breast cancer brain metastasis is maintained in the perivascular niche by astrocyte endfoot secretion of laminin-211, causing tumor cell membrane sequestration of YAP.

Zhang et al. show that, in mouse models, bone metastases can seed metastases in other organs and that this is driven by EZH2-mediated epigenetic reprogramming to promote stem cell-like features.

Adiposity and skeletal muscle mass have been shown to be prognostic for mortality in several cancers. In a recent study, CT imaging at diagnosis was used to determine whether components of body composition were associated with survival in men with advanced prostate cancer.