Deregulation of ribosomal protein expression and translation promotes breast cancer metastasis
Richard Y. Ebright, Sooncheol Lee, Ben S. Wittner, Kira Niederhoffer, Benjamin Nicholson, Aditya Bardia, Samuel S. Truesdell, Devon F. Wiley, Benjamin Wesley, Selena S. Li, Andy Mai, Nicola Aceto, Nicole Vincent-Jordan, Annamária Szabolcs, Brian Chirn, Johannes Kreuzer, Valentine Comaills, Mark Kalinich, Wilhelm Haas, David T. Ting, Mehmet Toner, Shobha Vasudevan, Daniel A. Haber, Shyamala Maheswaran, Douglas S. Micalizzi
Abstract
Metastasis: A matter of translation? Solid tumors shed a small number of cancer cells into the bloodstream, some of which are believed to contribute to metastasis. The molecular features that confer these circulating tumor cells (CTCs) with metastatic potential are poorly understood. Ebright et al. studied CTCs from breast cancer patients and found that cells with increased expression levels of certain ribosomal proteins and regulators of translation had greater metastatic capacity in a mouse model (see the Perspective by Ma and Jeffrey). Consistent with this finding, patients with higher levels of this subset of CTCs tended to have a poorer prognosis. Science , this issue p. 1468 ; see also p. 1424