Escaping from, moving towards, following a path, squeezing through: lots of opportunities for moving cells.

Paola Chiarugi

doi:10.1186/1478-811x-8-25

Abstract

Eukaryotic cells move within the surrounding environment essentially for two reasons: the necessity to reach a predetermined site or the hostility of the primitive site. Moving in the direction of an attractive site or factor is typical for embryonic movements and metastatic dissemination of cancer cells and motility strategies are very similar for both categories. Activation of an epigenetic process called epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) is indeed characteristic of embryonic development, of fibrotic or regeneration processes, and of the spreading of cancer cells from their primitive origin

Highlights

Eukaryotic cells move within the surrounding environment essentially for two reasons: the necessity to reach a predetermined site or the hostility of the primitive site
The latter is composed of several cell types, with fibroblasts, macrophages and endothelial cells being the most relevant for tumor progression towards a motile/aggressive phenotype
Cancerassociated macrophages (CAMs) show several intermediate levels of activation in response to these factors, they all are of the M2-subtype, that is incapable of killer and antigen presenting activities, but able to affect the malignancy and motility of cancer cells [12]

Summary

Introduction

Eukaryotic cells move within the surrounding environment essentially for two reasons: the necessity to reach a predetermined site or the hostility of the primitive site. Three key factors are affecting the shift between modes of motility: stiffness and composition of ECM (Brabek et al, this issue [4]), intratumoral hypoxia [7] and the cellular stromal counterpart of the tumor mass (Calorini and Bianchini, this issue, [8]). The latter is composed of several cell types, with fibroblasts, macrophages and endothelial cells being the most relevant for tumor progression towards a motile/aggressive phenotype.

Results

Conclusion