Chemokines and the molecular basis of cancer metastasis.

Metastasis is the chief cause of morbidity and mortality in most cancers. Appropriately, the words “cancer” (from the Latin for “crab”) and “metastasis” (from the Greek for “change in position”) both refer to cell movement: the crab-like invasion of cancer into healthy tissue and the migration of cancer cells to sites distant from the primary tumor. Since the work of Paget more than 100 years ago, pathologists have recognized that the movement of cancer cells is not random and that different types of cancer have different destinations. To explain this specificity, the “soil and seed” theory states that different organs . . .