BRAIN METASTASES: A REVIEW ARTICLE

Cerebral metastases or brain metastases (brain mets) is the most common malignant intracranial cancer among all brain tumors. Brain mets are the secondary tumors migrated from the distinct organs to brain i.e. lung, breast, melanoma and kidney. Cerebral tumors have higher mortality rate among all cancers with poor prognosis. Main steps of brain metastatic cascade are: epethelial-to-mesenchymal transition of primary tumor cells, crossing the blood brain barrier (BBB) and colonization of metastatic cells in the brain. BBB plays important role in both protecting the CNS and also providing the support to metastatic tumor cells for angiogenenesis and propagation. Diagnosis of brain mets is done with imaging techniques and biopsy. Different therapeutics strategies are used to treat the brain metastases patient including surgery or stereotactic radiosurgery, whole brain radiation and targeted molecular and immunotherapies. The present review article will update the understanding of the reader by providing a comprehensive information related to brain metastases, how it is different from primary brain tumor and how the tumor cells cross the blood brain barrier and form the colonies in brain. Further, the present review article will describe the current studies on the molecular factors found to be associated with brain metastasis. At the end of the review article the available diagnosis and treatment options will be discussed.

Key Words : Cancer, blood brain barrier, brain, tumor, metastasis.