metastatic

American  

[met-uh-stat-ik] / ˌmɛt əˈstæt ɪk /

adjective

1. Pathology. of, relating to, or resulting from metastasis, the transference of disease-producing organisms or malignant or cancerous cells to other parts of the body by way of the blood or lymphatic vessels or membranous surfaces.

   These blood vessels supply the tumor with nutrients and facilitate its metastatic spread.

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Other Word Forms

• metastatically adverb

Etymology

Origin of metastatic

First recorded in 1760–70; metasta(sis) ( def. ) + -tic ( def. )

Example Sentences

The drug, daraxonrasib, showed improvements in survival and success compared with standard-of-care cytotoxic chemotherapy in patients with metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma who had been previously treated.

From Barron's • Apr. 13, 2026

The study also showed that KLF5 regulates other genes, including NCAPD2 and MTHFD1, but only in metastatic pancreatic cancer cells, not in primary tumor cells grown in the lab.

From Science Daily • Apr. 7, 2026

Two days before Christmas he tweeted that he’d been diagnosed with metastatic Stage 4 pancreatic cancer and “am gonna die.”

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 13, 2026

‘I want it to be useful,’ says former Sen. Ben Sasse, diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer last year at age 54.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 13, 2026

She had died in 1958, at the age of thirty-seven, from diffusely metastatic ovarian cancer—an illness ultimately linked to mutations in genes.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee