Tumor-initiating cells establish a niche to overcome isolation stress

While the tumor microenvironment is a critical contributor to cancer progression, early steps of tumor initiation and metastasis also rely on the ability of individual tumor cells to survive and thrive at locations where tumor stroma or immune infiltration has yet to be established. In this opinion article, we use the term 'isolation stress' to broadly describe the challenges that individual tumor cells must overcome during the initiation and expansion of the primary tumor beyond permissive boundaries and metastatic spread into distant sites, including a lack of cell-cell contact, adhesion to protumor extracellular matrix proteins, and access to nutrients, oxygen, and soluble factors that support growth. In particular, we highlight the ability of solitary tumor cells to autonomously generate a specialized fibronectin-enriched extracellular matrix to create their own pericellular niche that supports tumor initiation. Cancer cells that can creatively evade the effects of isolation stress not only become more broadly stress tolerant, they also tend to show enhanced stemness, drug resistance, tumor initiation, and metastasis.