A New Approach in Understanding the Metastatic Process

In an effort of understanding the mechanisms of the metastasis, researchers at the Institute Curie in Paris came up with a theory that suggests that every biological tissue regulates to a preferred pressure called homeostatic pressure and that an increased homeostatic pressure is an attribute of neoplastic tissues, the metastatic process depending on the difference of pressure between tumor cells and the host tissue.

Metastasis is the principal factor responsible for deaths due to cancer. It occurs in malignant tumors, 80 % of which starting as carcinomas which originate in epithelial tissues from where they invade the connective tissue. Cells detaching from this tumor arrive in the bloodstream or the lymphatic system and may give birth to a macroscopic secondary tumor in a distant organ; the chances of this happening are low, as only one in a thousand of these cells manages to do so.

The French scientists’ theory offers an explanation about why the efficiency of the metastatic process also depends on specific interactions between the invading cancer cells and the local organ tissues, most of the cancerous cells not being able to grow inside the invaded organs, showing preferential growth in different types of tissue.