The wu wei of brain metastases: When the gift of a pause is also a vulnerability.

In this issue of Cancer Cell, García-Gómez et al. show that brain-seeding cancer cells exploit an MXD4-dependent proliferative pause that enables survival under stress before metastatic outgrowth. By restraining MYC and activating protective stress responses, this pause becomes an Achilles' heel, potentially targetable to eradicate micrometastases before clinical relapse.