Promising New Approach to Attenuate Metastatic Disease, in Mice

Even after potentially “curative” surgery to remove primary tumors, metastatic disease often still develops and leads to death. The process by which metastatic cells from a primary tumor find a home in a metastatic niche is not a passive one. Several factors delineate and “prepare” a metastatic niche to receive and nurture metastatic tumor cells. For example, circulating monocytes home to an area and attach to it via a chemokine receptor, CCR2. The monocytes begin changing the molecular environment to make it welcoming and nurturing to circulating metastatic cells: They create the niche.

A multi-institutional team demonstrated, in mice, that low doses of drugs that change gene expression patterns (epigenetic therapy) can alter the ability of…