Figure 6.

miR signatures of the stages in multistep tumorigenesis, ascribed to hallmark capabilities. The orchestrated stepwise progression from normality to metastasis during tumorigenesis of the pancreatic islets is marked by distinctive miR signatures of the temporally and histologically separable neoplastic stages, correlating with the acquisition of hallmark capabilities of cancer. In addition, miR profiling uncovered strong correlative evidence that a distinct class of primary tumors spawns the metastases, in contradistinction to expectations of the alternative hypothesis that enabling mutations occur in a few cells of primary tumors, endowing those cells with a metastatic capability. Gray arrowhead from Metastasis signature to Met-like tumor indicates the majority of the metastasis signature is present in met-like primary tumors.