{"id":235551,"date":"2026-04-20T06:20:45","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T11:20:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/within-primary-breast-tumors-a-high-risk-cell-state-may-seed-future-metastases"},"modified":"2026-04-20T06:20:45","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T11:20:45","slug":"within-primary-breast-tumors-a-high-risk-cell-state-may-seed-future-metastases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/within-primary-breast-tumors-a-high-risk-cell-state-may-seed-future-metastases","title":{"rendered":"Within primary breast tumors, a high-risk cell state may seed future metastases"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/within-primary-breast-tumors-a-high-risk-cell-state-may-seed-future-metastases.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Understanding which cells within a tumor will go on to form metastases remains one of the major challenges in cancer research. A study led by the Cell Plasticity in Development and Disease laboratory, headed by \u00c1ngela Nieto at the Institute for Neurosciences (IN), a joint center of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Miguel Hern\u00e1ndez University (UMH) of Elche, offers an unexpected answer: The cells that will give rise to metastases can already be identified within the primary tumor.<\/p>\n<p>The study, <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41467-026-70242-4\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Nature Communications<\/i>, combines the analysis of a mouse model of breast cancer with patient data. The results show that, at the invasive front of the tumor, there is a specific population of cells capable of both invading and either proliferating or entering a dormant state. This balance determines whether cells that escape the tumor can initiate new tumor growths in distant organs, the feared metastases.<\/p>\n<p>Nieto\u2019s team has been studying the <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/news\/2022-06-emt-cancer-cells-epithelial-cell.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition<\/a> (EMT) for decades, a program that controls cell migration during embryonic development and is reactivated in tumors to enable cancer cells to spread and form metastases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Understanding which cells within a tumor will go on to form metastases remains one of the major challenges in cancer research. A study led by the Cell Plasticity in Development and Disease laboratory, headed by \u00c1ngela Nieto at the Institute for Neurosciences (IN), a joint center of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Miguel [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-futurism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}