¡Metástasis!

Madrid, November 29 (efesalud.com). Dr. Hernán Cortés-Funes discusses the significance of metastasis in cancer patients in his video blog: "In principle, it's simply a bad sign in the progression of a tumor because it indicates that cancer cells have spread to other vital organs through the bloodstream or lymphatic system." According to oncologist Cortés-Funes, metastasis "doesn't imply a worse prognosis for the disease," since if the patient receives effective treatment for the primary cancer, the medication should be equally appropriate for the metastatic process. However, sometimes the primary tumor has disappeared, as in the breast, lung, colon, or many other neoplastic areas, or the metastasis coexists with the cancer, so the patient receives different treatments for each case; for example, general chemotherapy before surgery to "remove cancer from the intestine." Thanks to research, it is now possible to determine the risk of metastasis and the molecular genetic profile of a tumor. Therefore, if the risk is high, its spread can be prevented or its appearance delayed with adjuvant chemotherapy, a preventative treatment: "There is no metastasis, but it is presumed." In colloquial terms, metastasis occurs when "the tumor's stem cells develop daughter cells, and these leave home very early." For this reason, the tumor is attacked as soon as possible "so that the daughter cells do not return with the disease." Even so, stem cells "with a less aggressive component" also migrate and "settle in different parts of the body." If they are not destroyed with adjuvant treatment, "being more resistant than the daughter cells," they cause late metastases, as happens in breast cancer tumors. Scientists like Joan Massagué Solé, the new scientific director of the Sloan Kettering Institute, one of the leading cancer research centers in the US affiliated with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, where fellow Spaniard José Baselga is the medical director, are searching for ways to eliminate "these dormant stem cells, like dormant cells," that cause "late relapses." More videos and reports at http://www.efesalud.com/