Metastasis inside‐out: dissemination of cancer cell clusters with inverted polarity

Abstract

Zajac et al (2018) utilize patient tissue to discover a novel cellular mechanism for metastasis in colorectal cancer. They isolated cancer cell clusters from patient peritoneal fluid and demonstrated that these clusters invaded collectively into collagen gels, patient-derived tissues, and through the peritoneum of mice. During invasion the clusters retained an inverted epithelial architecture, functioning as multicellular metastatic seeds with inverted polarity.