According to a new study from University of Michigan discover how prostate cancer cells spread to the bones. Science offers hope for the treatment of prostate cancer

So why does cancer recur? Say a person has a tumor and surgeons cut it out or do radiation, but it recurs in the bone marrow five years later, Taichman said. Those cancer cells had been circulating in the body well before the tumor was discovered, and one place those cancer cells hid is the niche.

“So what have the cancer cells been doing during those five years? Now we have a partial answer — they’ve been sitting in this place whose job it is to keep things from proliferating and growing,” Taichman said.

“Our work also provides an explanation as to why current chemotherapies often fail in that once cancer cells enter the niche, most likely they stop proliferating,” said Yusuke Shiozawa, lead author of the study. “The problem is that most of the drugs we use to try to treat cancer only work on cells that are proliferating.”