Although the brightly colored cells in the center of this image catch your eye first, it's the seemingly neutral tissue around them that the Hynes Lab is studying. Does this extracellular matrix serve as a barrier or a doorway to metastasis?

When cancer cells spread to distant organs, they must navigate a complex network of cells and proteins to get there. This image shows colon cancer metastases (brown clusters) surrounded by liver (light brown) and immune cells (pink). Researchers seek to discover how the surrounding matrix (white/blue) facilitates or limits the interactions between them.