  Do cancer cells escape their confinement of their original habitat in the
primary tumor or are they forced out by ecological changes in their home niche?
Describing metastasis in terms of a simple one-way migration of cells from the
primary to target organs is an insufficient concept to cover the nuances of
cancer spread. A diaspora is the scattering of people away from an established
homeland. To date, diaspora has been a uniquely human term utilized by social
scientists, however, the application of the diaspora concept to metastasis may
yield new biological insights as well as therapeutic paradigms. The diaspora
paradigm takes into account and models several variables: the quality of the
primary tumor microenvironment, the fitness of individual cancer cell migrants
as well as migrant populations, the rate of bidirectional migration of cancer
and host cells between cancer sites, and the quality of the target
microenvironments to establish metastatic sites. Ecological scientific
principles can be applied to the cancer diaspora to develop new therapeutic
strategies. For example, ecological traps, habitats that lead to the extinction
of a species, can be developed to attract cancer cells to a place where they
can be better exposed to treatments or to cells of the immune system for
improved antigen presentation. Merging the social science concept of diaspora
with ecological and population sciences concepts can inform the cancer field to
understand the biology of tumorigenesis and metastasis and inspire new ideas
for therapy.
