MMP11 and cancer: The majority of past studies have identified MMP-11 predominantly within the tumor stroma, specifically in elongated, fibroblast-like cells located either intermingled with cancer cells in the center of the tumor or in the periphery in the invasive front [10, 12, 24, 31, 33, 34].In these studies MMP-11 staining was always intracellular, this can be explained by the rapid degradation of MMP11 in the extracellular space by an auto-degradation process or by other MMPs such as MMP14 [14, 30].