A predictor for bone metastasis in breast cancer patients

Roger Gomis (ICREA at IRB Barcelona) and his team have just found a reliable predictor for bone metastasis in breast cancer. The finding, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute reveals that the ability of breast cancers to invade bone requires the overexpression of a specific gene (MAF). With that, tumour cells learn how to to find, survive and colonize bone tissue. This ‘training’ seems highly focused on bone tissue: these metastatic tumor cells do not know how to invade other tissues such as brain, or lung.

Read the whole article at: http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/107/12/djv256.full?sid=acd7054a-b1ba-4aa9-8aa6-b7eb6d5e2d4e