Being diagnosed with cancer is devastating. But when the cancer cells have to spread to form secondary colonies, the prognosis for the patient is worse. If meaningful improvements in survival are to occur, then control of metastasis will be a foundation. Relatively little is known about the control of the metastatic process at the molecular level. This volume begins to explore our current knowledge regarding the underlying molecular and biochemical mechanisms controlling the metastatic phenotype. While all of the authors attempted to put their findings into a context for translation to the...

In recent years, serine proteases and matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) have gained considerable attention in tumor biology. For most of these proteases, their expression is a reliable indication of ongoing tissue remodeling. This book provides a comprehensive evaluation of the mechanisms of action of proteases and their inhibitors in tumor biology. The first part provides the reader with a selective overview of the molecular biology of serine proteases, MMPs and their physiological inhibitors. The most important proteases and their physiological as well as synthetic inhibitors are evaluated...

Most of the cancer patients die because the tumoral cells do not "stick" in the original site, but instead detach, invade and disseminate throughout the bloodstream to distal sites, where these transformed cells start to proliferate and destroy again. In the last ten years, researchers have identified a number of important genes involved in these processes, including cadherins, laminins, heparan sulfates, inhibitors of proteases and angiogenesis and many others. The puzzling problem was that few genetic alterations in these genes had been described in human tumors, despite the common finding...