From latent disseminated cells to overt metastasis: genetic analysis of systemic breast cancer progression.

ABSTRACT: According to the present view, metastasis marks the end in a sequence of genomic changes underlying the progression of an epithelial cell to a lethal cancer. Here, we aimed to find out at what stage of tumor development transformed cells leave the primary tumor and whether a defined genotype corresponds to metastatic disease. To this end, we isolated single disseminated cancer cells from bone marrow of breast cancer patients and performed single-cell comparative genomic hybridization. We analyzed disseminated tumor cells from patients after curative resection of the primary tumor (stage M0), as presumptive progenitors of manifest metastasis, and from patients with manifest metastasis (stage M1). Their genomic data were compared with those from microdissected areas of matched primary tumors

SUBMITTER: Schmidt-Kittler O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC164657 | biostudies-literature | 2003 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature