Zeitschrift für orthopädische Onkologie

Abstrakt

The Molecule Mechanisms of Bone Metastasis in Breast Cancer

Guang-Xian Zhong, Zhao-Yang Wu, Xia Zhu and Jian-Hua Lin

Breast cancer is the second most common cancer diagnosed worldwide, affecting approximately one in eight women during their lifetime. Strategies targeting the primary tumour have markedly improved, but systemic treatments to prevent metastasis are less effective. Breast cancer frequently spreads to the skeleton and causes destructive osteolytic bone metastases. Breast cancers express chemokine receptors, integrins, cadherins, and bone-resorbing and bone-forming factors that contribute to the successful and preferential spread of tumor from breast to bone. Once breast cancer cells arrest in bone, bone is a storehouse of a variety of cytokines and growth factors and thus provides an extremely fertile environment for the cells to grow. This article reviews the specific molecule mechanism of the changes of breast cancer cells, bone marrow microenvironment and the interaction between cancer cell and microenvironment in breast cancer.