Tracking cancer metastasis with CRISPR opens new areas for drug development

Metastasis is responsible for most cancer-related deaths, but it’s hard to trace. Now, a group of researchers has developed a CRISPR-based method that helped track tumor spreading patterns.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, San Francisco used the CRISPR gene editing tool to map out a detailed family tree that revealed the dynamics behind the development and progression of cancer metastases.