Question ID: WS-40
Submitted by: Patrick Brown
February 4, 2011
Why don’t non-tumor cells metastasize or even get sloppy in their finely-specified localization program through a lifetime of self-renewal and disturbances to their normal environments? What restricts the ability of stem or progenitor cells of any non-malignant tissue from surviving or growing at an ectopic site? For example, are there mechanisms that cause cells to undergo programmed cell death when they fail to detect the precise constellation of molecular signals characteristic of their normal microenvironment, or when they detect signals characteristic of an ectopic site?
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Comments
Submitted By Pier-Luigi Lollini
Non-tumor cells DO metastasize. Or, better, non-tumor cells can disseminate through the host, but they lack the uncontrolled proliferation tumor cells, hence they do not give rise to macroscopic metastases. Normal fetal cells can be found in the mother years after birth. For a modern experimental system, see
Podsypanina et al, "Seeding and propagation of untransformed mouse mammary cells in the lung", Science, 321: 1841, 2008.
