Editorial Comment: Deciphering the “Metastasome” Leads to Novel Hypotheses on Understanding the Evolution of Metastasis and Implicates Consequences for Metastasis Therapy and Prevention

摘要

The utmost challenge in cancer therapy undoubtedly still is the successful combat or even prevention of metastasis, which still can arise even years after successful primary tumor ther- apy or already during an ongoing, even personalized therapy of a cancer patient. Still, metastases are by far the most fre- quent causes for cancer deaths and we still are facing a situa- tion of rather fragmented research at metastasis, a still incom- plete understanding of metastasis evolution, and clinical pro- tocols which often are not, or cannot, be specifically designed to target the metastatically relevant tumor cell clones.