Massagué deciphers the origin of metastases

The newspaper La Vanguardia has published two articles about the most recent work done by Joan Massagué, Director of the Sloan Kettering Institute, co-founder of the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) and current chair of its External Advisory Board. In a study published in the journal Nature Cancer, Massagué reveals the mechanism that gives rise to metastasis. This discovery marks the culmination of a line of research that was started about 20 years ago. The study describes in detail how cancer cells stealthily use a mechanism that repairs and has beneficial effects in healthy tissues.

The article in La Vanguardia includes the expert opinions of Roger Gomis and Eduard Batlle, ICREA researchers at IRB Barcelona. Joan Massagué “has the great virtue of always posing the most relevant question,” says Gomis, who undertook postdoctoral training with the scientist in New York. Batlle, chair of the Cancer Science Programme at IRB Barcelona, highlights that Massagué “has laid the foundations for understanding the distinct aspects of the complexity of the problem.”

TV3 has also reported on the research carried out by Massagué. In an interview for the midday news, Salvador Aznar, ICREA researcher at IRB Barcelona and head of the Stem Cells and Cancer Lab, says that this study “opens up hope. From this information, we can attempt to develop treatments specifically targeting the cells that we know are responsible for the development of metastasis.”

Link to La Vanguardia

Link to La Vanguardia

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