Learn about metastasis, which is the spreading of cancer from its original location to a new location. Memorial Sloan Kettering researchers are making advances in understanding the three stages of metastasis.
Metastasis: How Cancer Spreads
Metastasis is when cancer spreads from where it started to a new place in the body. Metastasis can be broken down into three main stages:
- Dissemination
- Dormancy
- Outbreak
MSK researchers have made major advances in understanding each of these three stages.
Dissemination:
Cancer cells continually break off from the original tumor and enter the bloodstream. Most of them die but some may linger in the body and take up residence in a new organ.
Dormancy:
Treatment can kill most of these lingering cancer cells, but some survive and go dormant, like seeds. From time to time, dormant cells wake up and start to divide. When cells are awake and dividing, the immune system can see them and kill them, but the dormant ones escape detection. These are the cells that may eventually cause metastasis.
Outbreak:
Over time, these metastasis-initiating cells develop traits that enable them to adapt and survive in a new location. The cancer cells cling to blood vessels and trick the body into thinking they are a wound that needs to be healed. Cancer cells regrow the tumor by filling in the “wound.”
By better understanding the stages of metastasis, MSK researchers are learning how to halt cancer’s spread.