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Tumour cell invasion: an emerging role for basal epithelial cell extrusion

Nature Reviews Cancer volume 14, pages 495–501 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Metastasis is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths, but it is unclear how cancer cells escape their primary sites in epithelia and disseminate to other sites in the body. One emerging possibility is that transformed epithelial cells could invade the underlying tissue by a process called cell extrusion, which epithelia use to remove cells without disrupting their barrier function. Typically, during normal cell turnover, live cells extrude apically from the epithelium into the lumen and later die by anoikis; however, several oncogenic mutations shift cell extrusion basally, towards the tissue that the epithelium encases. Tumour cells with high levels of survival and motility signals could use basal extrusion to escape from the tissue and migrate to other sites within the body.

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Figure 1: The direction in which a cell extrudes has important consequences for its fate.
Figure 2: Modes of diverting extrusion basally.
Figure 3: Alternative mechanisms to divert extrusion basally.
Figure 4: Model of single and collective cell-autonomous basal extrusion of tumour cells during tumour invasion.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) for an Innovator Award DP2OD002056-01 and an RO1 1R01GM102169-01 to J.R., and for an NIH Developmental Biology Training Grant 5T32 HDO7491 to G.M.S.

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  1. Huntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah, 2000 Circle of Hope, Salt Lake City, 84112, Utah, USA

    Gloria M. Slattum & Jody Rosenblatt

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Correspondence to Jody Rosenblatt.

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Slattum, G., Rosenblatt, J. Tumour cell invasion: an emerging role for basal epithelial cell extrusion. Nat Rev Cancer 14, 495–501 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc3767

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