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Differences of osteoblastic bone metastases and osteolytic bone metastases in clinical features and molecular characteristics

Clinical and Translational Oncology volume 17, pages 173–179 (2015)Cite this article

Abstract

Several cancers tend to metastasize to bone, leading to osteolytic or osteoblastic bone lesions. The respective phenotypes of bone destruction and bone formation vary in clinical features, including incidence, prognosis, skeletal-related events and bone biomarkers. In addition, different molecular mechanisms explain the difference in phenotype. For example, molecules involved in osteolytic bone metastases (represented with breast cancer) include parathyroid hormone-related protein, transforming growth factor-β, while in osteoblastic lesions (represented with prostate cancer), endothelin-1 and morphogenetic proteins, etc. play a more important role in bone formation. It is important for us to understand the differences of bone metastases between two phenotypes to help clinicians to understand the underlying mechanisms, behaviors and therapies in development and currently available for bone metastases.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 30872591 and 81372749).

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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  1. Department of Medical Oncology, Shanghai Tenth People’s Hospital, School of Medicine, Tongji University, 301 Yanchang Road, Shanghai, 200072, People’s Republic of China

    J. Fang & Q. Xu

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Fang, J., Xu, Q. Differences of osteoblastic bone metastases and osteolytic bone metastases in clinical features and molecular characteristics. Clin Transl Oncol 17, 173–179 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12094-014-1247-x

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Keywords

  • Bone metastases
  • Differences
  • Clinical features
  • Molecular characteristics
  • Bone targets