How does cancer tumors spread

Or you might have a combination of treatments. Treatment that affects your entire body. Doctors call this systemic therapy.

It includes chemotherapy and other medications, such as targeted therapy, hormone therapy, and immunotherapy. Treatment for the area with cancer.

Doctors call this local therapy. It includes surgery, radiation therapy, and some other treatments. When you choose a treatment, talk with doctors who have experience treating metastatic cancer.

Doctors can have different opinions on the best treatment plan. Learn more about getting a second opinion. In some situations, metastatic cancer can be cured, but most commonly, treatment does not cure the cancer. But doctors can treat it to slow its growth and reduce symptoms. It is possible to live for many months or years with certain types of cancer, even after the development of metastatic disease. It is important to ask your doctor about the goals of treatment.

These goals may change during your care, depending on whether the cancer responds to the treatment. It is also important to know that pain, nausea, and other side effects can be managed with the help of your health care team.

This is called palliative care and should be a part of any treatment plan. Research shows that palliative care can improve the quality of your life and help you feel more satisfied with the treatment you receive.

Learn more about palliative care , or supportive care. Clinical trials offer treatments that are not yet available to the public. A clinical trial might be the main treatment for metastases, or just one of the options.

The clinical trial treatment may or may not help. But even if it does not, it gives researchers information that could help future patients. Learn more about clinical trials and talk with your health care team if you are interested in participating in one. When you live with cancer for many months or years, doctors often treat it like a chronic, or long-term, illness. Like someone with any chronic illness, such as diabetes or heart failure, treatment is important.

It is important to follow your treatment plan so it works as well as possible. More often, cancer cells that break off from the main tumor travel through the bloodstream.

Once in the blood, they can go to any part of the body. Many of these cells die, but some may settle in a new area and start to grow. Treatment is also based on where the cancer started. There are some similarities and differences between the more well known circulatory system and the lymphatic system. Small lymphatic vessels merge into larger ones and these large vessels eventually empty into lymph nodes.

Lymph nodes are kidney bean shaped tissues that are found in grape-like clusters in several locations around the body. Lymph nodes are sites of immune system activation and immune cell proliferation growth. The fluid in this extensive network flows throughout the body, much like the blood supply. It is the movement of cancer cells into the lymphatic system, specifically the lymph nodes, that is used in the detection of metastatic disease.

The staging of cancer is discussed in more detail in the Diagnosis and Detection section. The Anatomic Model In the anatomic model of metastsis, secondary tumors occur in the organs which they encounter first during their dissemination from the primary tumor. This scenario appears to occur in regional metastases, where tumor cells gain access to nearby tissue or lymph nodes through the blood or lymphatic circulation.

In this case, the capillary bed of the liver is the first encountered by the tumor cells after leaving the colon, and the liver seems to provide a suitable environment for the growth of these secondary tumors.

The Seed and Soil Hypothesis Early cancer researchers noticed a propensity for certain cancers to metastasize to the same organ. In Stephen Paget observed that patients with breast cancer often developed secondary tumors in the liver. He considered it unlikely that this occurrence was due primarily to accessibility of the liver by the blood supply, as other organs receiving equivalent blood supply rarely developed metastases. He instead developed the "Seed and Soil" hypothesis, in which certain tumor cells the seeds can only successfully colonize selective organs the soil that have suitable growth environments At the heart of the Seed and Soil hypothesis is the idea that successful metastasis depends on the interaction of the metastasizing tumor cells with the cells of the target organ the stroma, or tumor microenvironment.

Not only must tumor cells must be able to produce factors that alter the stromal cells in such a way as to better serve the survival and growth of the tumor, but the environment in which the cancer cell finds itself must be capable of responding to those signals. If the cancer cell finds itself in an inhospitable soil i. Recent studies examining the profile of genes expressed in tumors that metastasis to specific organs have identified specific genetic signatures of these tumors.

For example, genes that mediate the metastasis of breast cancer to bone are different than those that mediate metastasis to the lung. In essence, different sets of genes allow tumor cells to specifically interact with the stromal cells of the target organ. These findings may lead to therapeutic strategies to target the metastatic properties of tumors.

In certain cases tumor cells invade a foreign tissue, but fail to colonize it; in effect, they remain dormant. What causes the inability of these cells to successfully establish secondary tumors? They may be incapable of promoting sufficient angiogenesis, or they may be unable to reproduce, either of which might be due to a lack of the proper interactions between the tumor cell and its new environment.

Additional mutations appear to be required for these cells to overcome the difficulties encountered in new tissues 5. Dissecting the interactions of the tumor and its environment is very challenging. The vast number of growth factors, cytokines, and other factors present, as well as the many signaling pathways involved in cross-talk between these two entities makes mechanisms difficult to unravel, and almost any outcome is seemingly possible.

However, the importance of the tumor microenvironment is now very obvious, and as more is learned about it, greater numbers of therapeutic strategies targeting the environment alone or in conjunction with the tumor itself will become available. Learn more about tumor-host interactions. Metastatic Suppressors Recent work has uncovered a group of molecules that act to induce or suppress metastasis without affecting the growth of the primary tumor.

Many molecules, termed Metastatic Suppressors , have been identified.