Ezrin ... a metastatic detERMinant?

The insidious process of tumor metastasis is the most devastating and least well-understood aspect of cancer. Metastasis is very complex and employs many cellular processes, suggesting that individual metastatic determinants may not be easily identified. Mounting evidence, culminating in the work described in two recent articles, strongly suggests that the membrane:cytoskeleton organizer Ezrin can promote tumor metastasis (Khanna et al., 2004; Yu et al., 2004). Ultimately, a better understanding of exactly how Ezrin confers metastatic advantage will provide important insight into this key problem in cancer biology.