Stromal changes in the aged lung induce an emergence from melanoma dormancy.

ABSTRACT: Disseminated cancer cells from primary tumours can seed in distal tissues, but may take several years to form overt metastases, a phenomenon that is termed tumour dormancy. Despite its importance in metastasis and residual disease, few studies have been able to successfully characterize dormancy within melanoma. Here we show that the aged lung microenvironment facilitates a permissive niche for efficient outgrowth of dormant disseminated cancer cells-in contrast to the aged skin, in which age-related changes suppress melanoma growth but drive dissemination. These microenvironmental complexities can be explained by the phenotype switching model, which argues that melanoma cells switch between a proliferative cell state and a slower-cycling, invasive state^1-3. It was previously sh

SUBMITTER: Fane ME 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9554951 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature