Genetic analysis of invasion and metastasis.

Metastasis formation is a multistep process that probably requires a complex interplay of a large and heterogeneous group of genes, including genes involved in cellular resistance to immunorejection and genes controlling the invasive potential of cells. Transfection experiments have shown that oncogenes of the ras gene family as well as oncogenes of the kinase group are able to induce invasive and metastatic properties in non-transformed cells as well as in tumorigenic, but non-metastatic, cells. However, these findings are not in agreement with observations on spontaneous human tumours in which no correlation was found between activation or increased expression of ras genes and the invasive and metastatic properties of these cells. Further studies have indicated that in particular cell types nuclear oncogenes like N-myc and adenovirus derived E1A may influence metastasis formation by trans-regulation of other genes, including class I genes of the major histocompatibility complex and genes coding for proteolytic enzymes. The many efforts to identify additional invasion and metastasis associated genes by transfection of high molecular weight metastatic tumour DNA met with little success. Somatic cell fusion studies, however, indicate that such genes exist and that one or more of them are located on human chromosome 7.