The word "anoikis" was coined by Frisch and Francis in a paper published in the Journal of Cell Biology in 1994.
[2] "Anoikis", in their words, means "(...the state of being without a home) to describe the cells' apoptotic response to the absence of cell–matrix interactions".
The word apparently is a neologism construction consisting of three Greek morphemes agglutinated together: ἀν- "without", οἰκ- "house", and the suffix -ις.
[citation needed] Using a novel high-throughput screening assay, Mawji et al. showed that anisomycin can sensitize metastatic epithelial cells to anoikis and reduce circulating tumor cell implantation in vivo.
[5] One key mechanism that renders cancer cells independent from tissue adherence is dysregulation of the pathway network that controls transcription factor NF-κB.