The last decade has seen an explosion in knowledge of the molecular basis and treatment of cancer. The molecular events that define the lethal phenotype of various cancers—the genetic and cellular alterations that lead to a cancer with a poor or incurable prognosis—are being defined. While these studies describe the cellular events of the lethal phenotype of cancer in detail, how these events result in the common clinical syndromes that kill the majority of cancer patients is not well understood. It is clear that the central step that makes most cancers incurable is metastasis. Understanding the traits that a cancer acquires to successfully grow and metastasize to distant sites gives insight into how tumors produce multiple factors that result in multiple different clinical syndromes that are lethal for the patient.

中文翻译：

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癌症的致死表型：恶性肿瘤导致死亡的分子基础

过去十年见证了癌症分子基础和治疗知识的爆炸式增长。定义各种癌症致死表型的分子事件——导致癌症预后不良或无法治愈的遗传和细胞改变——正在被定义。虽然这些研究详细描述了癌症致死表型的细胞事件，但这些事件如何导致导致大多数癌症患者死亡的常见临床综合征尚不清楚。很明显，使大多数癌症无法治愈的核心步骤是转移。了解癌症成功生长和转移到远处部位所获得的特征可以深入了解肿瘤如何产生多种因素，从而导致对患者致命的多种不同临床综合征。