Studying metastasis is one of the primary focuses of our lab. When a new student step into this field, most likely she/her will start the literature search from the past decade, or even worse, just focusing on what has published in the past five year. Yet, there are more than 100 years of collective wisdom of metastasis research is worth the researchers in the field – new and old – to revisit.
I pulled this classic review paper (https://www.nature.com/articles/nrc1098) out from my graduate school reference collection. A influential article dated back to 2003. It is authored by a giant in the metastasis research Isaiah (Josh) J. Fidler, who I was lucky enough to know and meet later during my time at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center as a postdoc. While this review, at the time of written, does not contain any “fancy” modern terms like cancer stem cell, dormancy, plasticity, cancer metabolism, immune therapy, single cell sequence etc., the profound complexity of the biology of tumor metastasis depicted in this review still keep getting inspired me and drive my research question daily. We have to remember what the field has been in the past before embarking on any new exploration. As the old saying reminds us:“Study the past if you would define the future.” – Confucius
Happy reading! I bet you will enjoy it.