Scientists at Cambridge have now identified a protein that plays a key role in metastasis, which not only hints at a new potential treatment but reveals for the first time that this process isn't unique to cancer.

No matter where in the body it originates, cancer can eventually begin to colonize other organs and tissues through a process known as metastasis, which makes it much harder to treat. Unfortunately, there's still much about metastasis that scientists don't understand, but ongoing research is continually uncovering mechanisms that could lead to new therapy options.

In the new study, Cambridge scientists discovered not just a new mechanism for metastasis, but completely recontextualized its role. It's long been thought that metastasis was an abnormal process that arises in cancer, but the new study found that it's a process used by healthy cells as well – cancer just hijacks it for its own purposes.