Healing Gone Haywire: Wound-repair genes signal cancer spread

Aggressive tumors have a lot in common with wounded tissues—both show rapid cell division and the growth of new blood vessels. Those similarities inspired a new test to predict which breast tumors will spread rapidly if untreated and which are likely to be less aggressive.

The test, which tracks the activity of genes that normally mend injured tissues, outperforms existing predictors of breast cancer spread, or metastasis.