Dr. Pollard noted that metastatic disease is the major cause of cancer mortality, in part because the distant tumors tend to resist chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Unfortunately, the biological mechanisms that underlie metastatic disease are poorly understood, so continuing research is needed. And if metastasis can somehow be blocked ?”? particularly through influencing cells of the metastatic microenvironment ?”? the impact on cancer mortality would be enormous.

The paper, A Distinct Macrophage Population Mediates Metastatic Breast Cancer Cell Extravasation, Establishment and Growth, was published August 10 in PLoS ONE, a journal of the Public Library of Science. The lead author is post-doctoral fellow Binzhi Qian, Ph.D., Einstein. Other co-authors are Yan Deng and Yiyu Zou, Einstein; Jae Hong Im and Ruth J. Muschel, University of Oxford Churchill Hospital in England; and Richard A. Lang, Children ™s Hospital Research Foundation, in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Dr. Pollard is the director of the Center for the Study of Reproductive Biology and Women ™s Health, deputy director of the Albert Einstein Cancer Center, professor of developmental and molecular biology, and of obstetrics & gynecology and women ™s health. He is also the Louis Goldstein Swan Chair in Women ™s Cancer Research at Einstein.

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