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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2018 Mar 1.
Published in final edited form as: Cancer Metastasis Rev. 2016 Dec;35(4):669–676. doi: 10.1007/s10555-016-9639-8

Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

EV secretion may lead to the early acquisition of CTCs. Early CTCs (orange) may receive EVs from neighboring tumor cells that give it different traits necessary to intravasate and survive in the circulation. Transferred traits may include: enhanced invasion through the ECM (purple), resistance to anoikis (blue), protection from immune cells (may be mediated by recruitment of platelets, green), adhesion at the premetastatic niche (black). Once these cells arrive at a premetastatic site they may enter quiescence due to exhaustion of EV signals from the primary tumor, as well as EV-dependent and -independent metastasis suppression mechanisms by stromal cells (brown) in the premetastatic niche.