Joan Massague

Joan Massague has made foundational contributions to understanding metastasis and tumor dormancy, identifying L1CAM as a critical marker of disseminated tumor cell reactivation from dormancy and defining the stem cell-like state required for metastatic colonization. His laboratory at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center has mapped organ-specific metastasis gene programs and revealed how TGF-beta signaling cooperates with other pathways to enable metastatic outgrowth in brain, lung, and bone. His four decades of research have provided the conceptual framework for understanding how dormant cancer cells reawaken to form clinically significant metastases.