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Updated: Jul 8, 2025

Heteromulticellular Stromal Cells in Scaffold-free 3D Cultures of Epithelial Cancer Cells to Drive Invasion
Published on: April 4, 2025
It's all about the base: stromal cells are central orchestrators of metastasis
Lea Monteran1, Yael Zait1, Neta Erez1
1Department of Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Abstract:
The tumor microenvironment (TME) is an integral part of tumors and plays a central role in all stages of carcinogenesis and progression. Each organ has a unique and heterogeneous microenvironment, which affects the ability of disseminated cells to grow in the new and sometimes hostile metastatic niche. Resident stromal cells, such as fibroblasts, osteoblasts, and astrocytes, are essential culprits in the modulation of metastatic progression: they transition from being sentinels of tissue integrity to being dysfunctional perpetrators that support metastatic outgrowth. Therefore, better understanding of the complexity of their reciprocal interactions with cancer cells and with other components of the TME is essential to enable the design of novel therapeutic approaches to prevent metastatic relapse.
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