Cancer Biology and Genetics Program, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10021, USA.
Metastasis occurs when genetically unstable cancer cells adapt to a tissue microenvironment that is distant from the primary tumor. This process involves both the selection of traits that are advantageous to cancer cells and the concomitant recruitment of traits in the tumor stroma that accommodate invasion by metastatic cells. Recent conceptual and technological advances promote our understanding of the origins and nature of cancer metastasis.