Bone metastasis and the metastatic niche

The bone marrow has been long known to host a unique environment amenable to colonization by metastasizing tumor cells. Yet, the underlying molecular interactions within this specialized microenvironment which give rise to the high incidence of bone metastasis in breast and prostate cancer patients...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of Molecular Medicine Vol. 93; no. 11; pp. 1203 - 1212
Main Authors Ren, Guangwen, Esposito, Mark, Kang, Yibin
Format Journal Article Book Review
LanguageEnglish
Published Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.11.2015
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Animals
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Biomedicine
Bone Neoplasms - secondary
Human Genetics
Humans
Internal Medicine
Molecular Medicine
Neoplasm Metastasis - pathology
Neoplasms - pathology
Review
Tumor Microenvironment
Metastatic niche
Bone metastasis
Perivascular niche
Tumor dormancy
Osteoblastic niche
Hematopoiesis
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Summary:The bone marrow has been long known to host a unique environment amenable to colonization by metastasizing tumor cells. Yet, the underlying molecular interactions within this specialized microenvironment which give rise to the high incidence of bone metastasis in breast and prostate cancer patients have long remained uncharacterized. With the recent description of the bone metastatic “niche,” considerable focus has been placed on understanding how the bone stroma contributes to each step of metastasis. Discoveries within this field have demonstrated that when cancer cells home to the niche in which hematopoietic and mesenchymal stem/progenitor cells normally reside, a bidirectional crosstalk emerges between the tumor cells and the bone metastatic stroma. This communication modulates every step of cancer cell metastasis to the bone, including the initial homing and seeding, formation of micrometastases, outgrowth of macrometastases, and the maintenance of long-term dormancy of disseminated tumor cells in the bone. In clinical practice, targeting the bone metastatic niche is evolving into a promising avenue for the prevention of bone metastatic relapse, therapeutic resistance, and other aspects of cancer progression. Here, we review the current knowledge concerning the role of the bone metastatic niche in bone metastasis.
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ISSN:0946-2716
1432-1440
DOI:10.1007/s00109-015-1329-4