CRISPR technology gives insight into how cancers metastasize in real time

Recently published in Science, researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MA, USA) and the University of California (CA, USA) have discovered that they can track a cancer cell’s lineage to find when a single tumor cell begun to metastasize. "With this method, you can ask questions like, 'How frequently is this tumor metastasizing? Where did the metastases come from? Where do they go?'" commented lead investigator, Jonathon Weissman (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). "By being able to follow the history of the tumor in vivo, you reveal differences in the biology of the tumor that were otherwise invisible." Previously, scientists have...