Cell Surface Alterations and the Metastatic Behavior of Tumor Cells

Abstract

The cell biology of cancer metastasis has been studied in considerable detail over the last ten years yielding many important new insights into the pathogenesis of this important and life-threatening disease which have been well reviewed in recent years ^1–3. In contrast, efforts at understanding the underlying biochemistry and molecular biology of this process have been limited, and largely unsuccessful. A much greater understanding of the molecular mechanisms responsible for the expression of the metastatic phenotype will be required if we are to develop novel and productive approaches to the therapy of metastatic disease by any approach other than random and semi-empirical screening, which hitherto has made little impact in developing anticancer drugs against the more common solid malignancies of man. In the absence of any obvious biochemical target to guide the direction of such an endeavor it is becoming increasingly clear that the process of identifying molecular properties that correlate either qualitatively or quantitatively with metastatic potential will be a lengthy and challenging task and with no guarantee that any correlation, once identified, will be causal or will offer a suitably “unique” and pharmacologically exploitable target for the design of new therapeutic agents directed against it.