Filopodia and the metastatic cascade.

The formation of metastases is responsible for 90% of deaths in patients with solid tumours. Consequently, there is a pressing need to develop therapeutic strategies that block the ability of cancer cell to disseminate throughout the body. We and others have made an intriguing discovery that cancer metastasis is associated with the development of specialized cellular protrusions called filopodia. In migrating cells, filopodia are “an