Tumors often start out as a benign growth, but gradually progress toward the malignant stage over a relatively long period of time. Tumor progression results from accumulated genetic mutations and inheritable epigenetic modifications that enable clonal evolution and selection of new clonal populations of tumor cells with aggressive characteristics including metastasis and therapy resistance. Increasing amounts of experimental evidence suggests that tumor microenvironment play a significant role in directing clonal evolution and determining clonal cell fate, which eventually leads to emergence...
Tumors often start out as a benign growth, but gradually progress toward the malignant stage over a relatively long period of time. Tumor progression ...
