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Tracy Hampton, PhD

JAMA. 2004;291:2417-2419.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

For years, researchers have been striving to unravel the detailed mysteries of how healthy cells become cancerous. They continue to catalog numerous DNA mutations in tumor cells that cause abnormal protein production, accelerated cell growth, and a blatant disregard of normal cell-death pathways.

While these elements are clearly key steps in the progression from normalcy to malignancy, it is becoming obvious that events occurring in the tissues surrounding cancer cells play major roles as well. Recent work by several research groups is uncovering intriguing evidence that a cancer cell's so-called microenvironment is determining its tumorigenic potential.

FINDING A NICHE

As hardy and aggressive as many cancer cells are, they cannot survive on their own. "Cells are only going to form a mass in an environment that is amenable to support proliferation," says Lisa Coussens, PhD, of the University of California, San Francisco. "You can't proliferate all by . . . [Full Text of this Article]