Cancer to bone: a fatal attraction

When cancer metastasizes to bone, considerable pain and deregulated bone remodelling occurs, greatly diminishing the possibility of cure. Understanding how metastasizing tumour cells mobilize and sculpt the bone microenvironment to enhance tumour growth and promote bone invasion has uncovered new therapeutic opportunities. When cancer metastasizes to bone, considerable pain and deregulated bone remodelling occurs, greatly diminishing the possibility of cure. Metastasizing tumour cells mobilize and sculpt the bone microenvironment to enhance tumour growth and to promote bone invasion. Understanding the crucial components of the bone microenvironment that influence tumour localization, along with the tumour-derived factors that modulate cellular and protein matrix components of bone to favour tumour expansion and invasion, is central to the pathophysiology of bone metastases. Basic findings of tumour–bone interactions have uncovered numerous therapeutic opportunities that focus on the bone microenvironment to prevent and treat bone metastases.