The Biology of Pulmonary Metastasis

The process of metastasis relies on a series of stochastic and sequential steps, with selective pressure exerted on a large number of genetically volatile cancer cells to produce a very small fraction of tumor cells with the ability to navigate the transition from primary tumor cell to end-organ metastasis. This process is intricately determined by cell-microenvironment interactions, the mechanistic understanding of which is steadily increasing. The continued elucidation of pathways that govern these interactions offers potential therapeutic options to patients with advanced disease.