Metastasis of circulating tumor cells: favorable soil or suitable biomechanics, or both?

Metastasis is the end product of a multistep process where cancer cells disseminate and home themselves in distant organs. Tumor cell extravasation is a rare, inefficient and transient event in nature and makes its studies very difficult. Noteworthy, little is known about how cancer cells arrest, adhere and pass through the endothelium of capillaries.