Cancer metastasis is related to normal tissue stemness.

Area of Science:

• Oncology
• Cancer Biology
• Genomics

Background:

• Cancer metastasis is a complex process potentially linked to stem cells in normal tissues.
• Existing clinical staging for metastasis lacks continuous numerical representation, hindering detailed analysis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between normal tissue stemness and cancer metastasis.
• To develop a data mining approach for continuous numerical representation of metastasis.
• To identify a threshold for normal tissue stemness that triggers tumor metastasis.

Main Methods:

• Utilized The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) clinical data paired with normal tissue stemness values (n=639).
• Employed data mining techniques including numericalization, sorting, and noise reduction filtering.
• Analyzed correlations between normal tissue stemness (NS), tumor stemness (TS), and clinical metastasis indicators.

Main Results:

• Normal tissue stemness (NS) positively correlated with tumor stemness (TS) (TS = 1.26 * NS).
• A threshold of NS > 0.5 was identified, beyond which TS increase decelerated (TS = 0.43 * NS) and metastasis indicators worsened.
• Increased NS correlated with higher cancer stage, distant metastasis, tumor size, invasion, and lymph node involvement.

Conclusions:

• Normal tissue stemness plays a critical role in triggering and progressing cancer metastasis.
• An NS value exceeding 0.5 is a potential trigger for tumor metastasis.
• This study provides a numerical approach to assess metastasis risk based on normal tissue stemness.