Making progress against metastasis

There’s good news about surviving stage 4 cancer — meaning cancer that has spread to other parts of the body — according to the new Cancer Facts and Figures report from the American Cancer Society.

In a sign of remarkable progress over the past two decades, more than one-third of people whose cancer has spread are alive after five years. The five-year survival rate for people with metastatic cancer rose to 35% this year — up from 17% in the mid-1990s, according to the latest statistics.

And the survival rate improved significantly across a variety of metastatic cancers including:

• Melanoma — from 16% to 35%
• Rectal cancer — from 8% to 18%
• Lung cancer — survival has jumped five-fold, from 2% to 10%

“But clearly, the overall survival rate is still much lower than we’d like it to be,” says Joan Massagué, PhD, a leading metastasis researcher and Director of the Sloan Kettering Institute at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). “That’s why researchers across MSK have dedicated their careers to studying the intricacies of metastatic disease and using those insights to develop new ways to treat it.”

The vast majority of deaths caused by cancer — as many as 9 in 10 — are caused not by an initial tumor, but by the spread of cancer to other parts of the body. This makes it one of the most urgent areas of research in cancer science today.

Read about some of the recent discoveries about metastasis from MSK labs.

• How a Better Understanding of Metastasis May Lead to Better Cancer Treatment
• How Cancer Spreads: Four Emerging Insights About Metastasis
• TGF-Beta and RAS Signaling Are Both Required for Lung Cancer Metastasis, Study Finds
• Dormant Cancer Cells Change Shape To Survive Immune System Attack
• MSK Scientists Identify Potential New Strategy Against Metastasis
• Leptomeningeal Metastasis Clinical Trial Offers Treatment for Stage 4 Breast Cancer Patient