Talk:Metastasis

Initial sources
The initial version of this article was a cut-and paste from these three public domain U.S. Federal Government sources:
 * http://www.nidr.nih.gov/Spectrum/NIDCR3/3grasec7.htm
 * http://press2.nci.nih.gov/sciencebehind/angiogenesis/angio02.htm
 * http://www.nci.nih.gov/dictionary/db_alpha.aspx?expand=M


 * And now several other public domain articles -- see the revision history.

That's the first cut at this article done. Does anyone want to copyedit and fact check it?

Cleanup
Slightly modified the intro and cleaned up a little. Removed the following: Tumors are classified as either benign or malignant. Malignant tumors can spread by invasion and metastasis while benign tumors cannot (and only grow locally). The term "cancer" is often reserved for malignant tumors, although in common usage, many premalignant tumors are also referred to as cancers. Some tumors with benign histology can behave as malignant tumors, such as in brain tumors, where treatment has to be as aggressive as with malignant disease.

Because it does not appear to be wholly relevant to metastasis. Besides, the whole The term "cancer" is often reserved...... and Some tumors with benign histology can behave as malignant tumors... sounds odd.

Tumor angiogenesis is the proliferation of a network of blood vessels that penetrates into cancerous growths, supplying nutrients and oxygen and removing cellular waste products. Tumor angiogenesis actually starts with cancerous tumor cells releasing molecules that send signals to surrounding normal host tissue. This signaling activates certain genes in the host tissue that, in turn, make proteins to encourage growth of new blood vessels.

Again this is not really relevant to metastasis. A note about angiogenesis is enough. - Two  Oars   (Rev)  08:03, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Broken Link
"Metastasis photo at the Atlas of Pathology website" link does not work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bchamp (talk • contribs) 13:22, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 16:30, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Why is it called metastasis?
Just curious. 204.52.215.107 (talk) 15:49, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Metastasis reminds me of the "spotting" or "jumping" of a wildfire or leapfrog development as a form of suburbanization, by the way - same stuff, different phenomena.

Arrows
There should be arrows pointing to the tumor (or whatever else) in the images in the article. It would make the image more understandable. Nitric Oxide (talk) 13:06, 3 April 2008 (UTC)NO

Circling the area on a diagram (photo) to is a clean way of showing the area referred in an article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mnlady (talk • contribs) 14:11, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

CT?
Say or link to what "CT" stands for. Jidanni (talk) 03:05, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Done! Mike Williamson Oct 13th, 2011 —Preceding undated comment added 16:35, 13 October 2011 (UTC).

NEJM
Anybody read [http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/359/26/2814 N Engl J Med. 2008 Dec 25;359(26):2814-23.] Molecular basis of metastasis. Chiang AC, Massagué J.? Nbauman (talk) 04:52, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Infection?
I read a lot of American, Canadian and European medical journals and I can't remember ever seeing anyone using the term "metastasis" to refer to anything other than cancer.

I know that the technical definition, that you can find in some dictionaries, is that metastasis can be any spread of a disease process, including infection or cancer, but the dictionaries always make it clear that the most common use is for cancer.

I think the other uses are archaic and not currently used. Can anyone give me a modern citation in which "metastasis" is actually used to refer to anything other than cancer?

Would anybody object if I changed it? Nbauman (talk) 05:05, 10 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree. I will remove the mention of Infection myself if no one objects. Specifically in the part "It was previously thought that only malignant tumor cells and infections have the capacity to metastasize; however, this is being reconsidered due to new research.[1][2][3]". When I go to the entry for infection I see no mention of metastasis at all. Also, none of the cited references have information on infections. BuddhaBubba (talk) 20:20, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I see civilizations have a tendency to metastasize. After all, cities spawn other cities, eh? New York practically begat Chicago, much like Amsterdam begat New York, and ancient Greece helped to spawn Roman civilization. 192.12.88.7 (talk) 05:31, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Minerva: Metastasis
There is also a half-life 2 mod (if you can call it that, as it has a unique stryline and setting), called "Minerva: Metastasis". You should indicate this. --97.123.8.159 (talk) 00:23, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Local, regional, and remote metastases
Metastases can be classified in different ways, and one way that German references classify them is according to location: local, regional, and remote. If this is relevant for English usage, then I would suggest mentioning this classification in this article. Thomas.Hedden (talk) 12:41, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Metastasis limited to malignancy

 * Only malignant tumor cells and infections have the established capacity to metastasize; however, this is recently reconsidered by new research.
 * Most tumors and other neoplasms can metastasize, although in varying degrees (e.g., glioma and basal cell carcinoma rarely metastasize).

The first sentence limits metastasis to malignancy, in apparent contrast to the second sentence, which liberally generalizes "tumors" and "neoplasms," both of which include benign growths. If there's no clarification in a few days (as I see most comments on this page go unanswered), I'll modify the second sentence myself.  DRosenbach  ( Talk 00:18, 9 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I see that you didn't edit it at or all or the edit was reversed. I think the second sentence is fine because it says "Most tumors" not "All tumors" BuddhaBubba (talk) 20:27, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

New article Brain metastases
There is a discussion about this new article at Talk:Brain metastases. The article is currently unreferenced and it is proposed that be merged into metastasis. The article could stand on its own if properly referenced and cleaned up a bit. Your input would be appreciated. Regards, PDCook (talk) 15:34, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The article has references and has been improved to the point that it can be a stand alone article, I've removed the mergeto tag. PDCook (talk) 14:44, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Unspecific References
In the first paragraph, it seems that reference 2 and 3 should be after sentence one since only reference 1 has to do with metastases that do not start at a malignant tumor. I will change this. BuddhaBubba (talk) 20:32, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Prognosis after metastasis?
I came here hoping to find some data on how metastasis affects survival rate. Instead all I found was the rather vague "[metastasis] may decrease a patient's likelihood of survival." To a layman, metastasis is usually associated with an extremely poor prognosis and is essentially a death sentence. Is that true? I might try looking up some sources myself. --Elem3nt (talk) 13:14, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

First pass organ
How about first pass organ, i.e. the first organ where metastasize occurs to? 129.180.166.53 (talk) 12:37, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Stages of Metastasis
Would it be informative to have a section or diagram of the stages, i.e. Invasion, intravasation, transport, extravasation, colonisation, secondary angiogenesis? I realise this is addressed in the introduction but details of the stages are not really present

Also in the pathophysiology section it states that metastases are common in late stage tumours; aren't metastatic growths the definition of a late stage tumour, at least in most TNM staged tumours?

Finally the premetastatic niche theory should probably be included as to reasons for specific metastatic sites of specific tumours.

Bend91 (talk) 17:30, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Epithelial–mesenchymal transition
Epithelial–mesenchymal transition should be mentioned as a probable part of the process ? - Rod57 (talk) 06:00, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Research suggests metastasis is normal
Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 16:22, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-022-01182-0
 * ... Thus, NALCN regulates cell shedding from solid tissues independent of cancer, divorcing this process from tumorigenesis and unmasking a potential new target for antimetastatic therapies.
 * https://newatlas.com/medical/cancer-metastasis-breakthrough-rethink/
 * ... Blocking NALCN also caused healthy cells to migrate away from their original organs to other ones – pancreatic cells, for instance, moved to the kidney and became healthy kidney cells instead. ...