Does the natural selection mechanism make cancer develop?

The functions of evolution are active in areas with tumors just as they do in forests, in lawns, in oceans and in streams. This is the view of scientists in a well-known interdisciplinary field, an area thought to be related to cancer biology by evolutionary ecologists and evolutionary biologists.

Deep knowledge of their work may have profound implications for understanding why cancer treatments often fail and how to create new therapies thoroughly. for.

'Number of tumor cells continuously evolving through natural selection' , Dr. Carlo C. Maley, associate professor of 'Cell and molecular cancer generation' program at Wista Academy (Philadelphia, United States) States), there is also a field of study

Tumor cells (Photo: www.neuropat.dote.hu)

focus on this field of speech.'Mutations that are beneficial for survival and the production of cells in a tumor is what causes tumors to become malignant.'

' Evolution also creates resistance to cures,' Dr. Maley adds: 'When you apply chemotherapy to limit the number of tumor cells, you will be very It is possible to encounter a cellular mutation that is resistant to this therapy somewhere among billions or even billions of these cells. It is a central issue in cancer. The reason that we have not been able to treat cancer until now is because we are selecting to find tumor cells that are resistant to treatments. It's like we choose drug-resistant pests when we spray pesticides in the field. '

Dr. Maley notes that there are three necessary and sufficient conditions for natural selection to appear and all three conditions are found among tumor cells .

The first condition is a change in the number of tumor cells. This transformation is obviously evident for tumors, which are the mosaic of many different gene mutations.

The second condition is that this transformation is necessarily genetic. This trait is also found among tumor cells. When mutant tumor cells divide to replicate, the daughter cells will carry the same mutations.

The final condition is that this transformation must affect the ' health ', survival and production of tumor cells. And according to Dr. Maley, all traits that are considered to be signs of cancer affect the health status of tumor cells.

Under these conditions, cancer cells no longer have to ' bother ' the signals that inhibit normal growth in their living areas, they no longer need external signals to divide. As healthy cells need, they can prevent a series of extremely essential internal " directives " that force cells to self-destruct when their genes are mutated so much that they cannot be " repaired. " OK. The self-destruction solution is protective for normal cells known as apoptosis (suicide cells).

Understanding a clear tumor like this opens a way for new therapeutic strategies.

'It's not just a metaphor to say that the population of tumor cells is evolving,' Dr. Maley said. 'Evolution is happening in the tumor. So, let's think about how we want to influence this evolution. Can we push this evolution to the point where it can bring more benefits to us? "

One idea is to be able to develop new drugs that act as benign cell enhancers. Such drugs target specific benign cells in the tumor in a specific and precise way to increase the relative health of these cells on neighboring malignant cells. This allows benign cells to " compete " better than malignant cells and make the tumor become less " aggressive " and less dangerous.

'Another idea we are pursuing is the method we call' first instance ',' Dr. Maley said. 'For this method, how do you try to increase the health of chemically sensitive cells so they can outperform any tumor-resistant cells in the tumor? And then you can apply chemotherapy. So you will 'lure' the tumor into a vulnerable state and then you can 'hit' it with your treatment. '

In their article, Dr. Maley and the scientists working on this study also learned how ideas about fighting, animal eating, parasitism and resurrection are possible. mentioned in the tumor. Once again, they discovered that concepts from other fields helped illuminate the field of cancer biology.

Animal predation is expressed by mutant cells competing with each other to obtain the necessary food sources and the immune system often kills tumor cells like a predatory predator, then the tumor cells that have the ability to defend against being eaten are the cells that survive and continue to produce other cells.

An example of parasites can be seen through angiogenesis. In this process, a subset of tumor cells sends chemical signals to stimulate the host cell to create new blood vessels to supply the tumor with nutrients. However, Prospective cells, cells that do not ' invest ' in nutrient sources through the generation of signals, will take advantage of these nutrients.

Enrichment describes how two organisms interact in a way that benefits each other. Tumor cells send signals to stimulate the growth of cells that form ' scaffolds ' from these scaffolds that grow tumor cells. This scaffolding is known as fibroblast. These fibroblasts, in turn, send signals to tumor cells to stimulate their own development. Recent studies have also shown that microscopic fibroblasts containing tumors have begun to have their own mutations.

Dr. Maley said; 'They are evolving together, and this evolution has become an easy, fast and uncontrollable process.'

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