Neuronal and metastatic cancer cells: Unlike brothers

During development neuronal cells traverse substantial distances across the developing tissue. In the mature organism, however, they are bound to the confines of the nervous system. Likewise metastatic cancer cells have the potential to establish auxiliary tumor sites in remote tissues or entirely different organs. The epithelial-mesenchymal transition is the transformation of proliferative cancer cells into a highly invasive state, which facilitates the crossing of tissue boundaries and migration across various environments. This review contributes a first look into the parallels and contrasts between physical aspects of neuronal and metastatic cancer cells. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Mechanobiology. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.