Bone Neoplasia Program

This program is chaired by Marc Hansen, Ph.D. The group is comprised of faculty from multiple disciplines and interacts with the Musculoskeletal Signature Program. The Bone Program is organized to understand primary bone tumorigenesis and secondary metastasis to bone in the context of normal bone development and remodeling. Bone is both a storage source of cytokines critical to tumorigenesis and an important developmental process. It is also the only developmental process that is regulated by gravitational stress and loading.

As a storage source of cytokines, bone is an important site of metastasis for breast and prostate as well as other types of cancer. Both breast and prostate cancer subvert normal bone signaling pathways to facilitate their metastatic phenotype. Primary bone tumorigenesis appears to arise as a result of the deregulation of the normal bone developmental process. A better understanding of the normal regulatory processes that take place during bone remodeling, a time during which rapid proliferation of osteoblasts and osteoclasts occurs, and the role of the extracellular matrix laid down during bone development will improve our understanding of these same processes that are unregulated during both primary tumorigenesis as well as secondary metastasis.