Nine out of every 10 cancer deaths occur because the disease has
spread. Yet metastasis is the most poorly understood process in
cancer biology. "Its complexity has scared away many cancer
scientists," notes Robert Weinberg, a researcher at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Whitehead Institute for
Biomedical Research. How does a cancer cell suddenly acquire the
ability to jump to distant organs? Then how does the itinerant
cell learn to invade the brain or liver? The lack of answers to
these most basic of research questions has led to, at best, a
stalemate in the war on cancer, which kills more than a half
million U.S. patients annually. To understand metastasis,
scientists say new approaches are needed that go beyond simple
combat analogies. Enter M.I.T.'s new, megamillion-dollar David
H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, where cancer
scientists and topflight engineers will try something different.
The collaborative effort may be the best means of putting to
practical use the emerging