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Metastasis and the evolution of dispersal

journal contribution
posted on 2019-01-01, 00:00 authored by Tazzio Tissot, François Massol, Beata UjvariBeata Ujvari, Catherine Alix-Panabieres, Nicolas Loeuille, Frédéric Thomas
Despite significant progress in oncology, metastasis remains the leading cause of mortality of cancer patients. Understanding the foundations of this phenomenon could help contain or even prevent it. As suggested by many ecologists and cancer biologists, metastasis could be considered through the lens of biological dispersal: the movement of cancer cells from their birth site (the primary tumour) to other habitats where they resume proliferation (metastatic sites). However, whether this model can consistently be applied to the emergence and dynamics of metastasis remains unclear. Here, we provide a broad review of various aspects of the evolution of dispersal in ecosystems. We investigate whether similar ecological and evolutionary principles can be applied to metastasis, and how these processes may shape the spatio-temporal dynamics of disseminating cancer cells. We further discuss complementary hypotheses and propose experimental approaches to test the relevance of the evolutionary ecology of dispersal in studying metastasis.

History

Journal

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: biological sciences

Volume

286

Issue

1916

Pagination

1 - 9

Publisher

The Royal Society

Location

London, Eng.

ISSN

0962-8452

eISSN

1471-2954

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2019, The Author(s)