Related papers: Recognizing Cancer via Somatic and Organic Evoluti…
Environmental and genetic mutations can transform the cells in a co-operating healthy tissue into an ecosystem of individualistic tumour cells that compete for space and resources. Various selection forces are responsible for driving the…
Theoretical reasoning suggests that human cancer may result from knocking down the genetic constraints evolved for maintenance of the metazoan multicellularity, which, however, requires a critical test. Using xenograft-based experimental…
Tumor growth, which plays a central role in cancer evolution, depends on both the internal features of the cells, such as their ability for unlimited duplication, and the external conditions, e.g., supply of nutrients, as well as the…
Tumors are defined by their intense proliferation, but sometimes cancer cells turn senescent and stop replicating. In the stochastic cancer model in which all cells are tumorigenic, senescence is seen as the result of random mutations,…
Cancer is most commonly viewed as resulting from somatic mutations enhancing proliferation and invasion. Some hypotheses further propose that these new capacities reveal a breakdown of multicellularity allowing cancer cells to escape…
Drug resistance and metastasis - the major complications in cancer - both entail adaptation of cancer cells to stress, whether a drug or a lethal new environment. Intriguingly, these adaptive processes share similar features that cannot be…
Recurrence and metastasis have been regarded as two of the greatest obstacles for curing cancer. Cancer stem cell (CSC) have been found. They contribute to cancer development with the distinct feature of recurrence and resistance to the…
Development of a tumor is known to be a result of accumulation of DNA changes in somatic cells. However, the processes of how DNA changes are produced and how they accumulate in somatic cells are not clear. DNA changes include two types:…
Tumor development is an evolutionary process in which a heterogeneous population of cells with differential growth capabilities compete for resources in order to gain a proliferative advantage. What are the minimal ingredients needed to…
Research into somatic mutations in cancer cell DNA and their role in tumour growth and progression between successive stages is crucial for improving our understanding of cancer evolution. Mathematical and computer modelling can provide…
There is a widening recognition that cancer cells are products of complex developmental processes. Carcinogenesis and metastasis formation are increasingly described as systems-level, network phenomena. Here we propose that malignant…
A tumor can be thought of as an ecosystem, which critically means that we cannot just consider it as a collection of mutated cells but more as a complex system of many interacting cellular and microenvironmental elements. At its simplest, a…
Although somatic mutations are the main contributor to cancer, underlying germline alterations may increase the risk of cancer, mold the somatic alteration landscape and cooperate with acquired mutations to promote the tumor onset and/or…
In this review, we discuss recent advances on the plasticity of cancer stem cells and highlight their relevance to understand the metastatic process and to guide therapeutic interventions. Recent results suggest that the strict hierarchical…
Cancer results from genetic alterations that disturb the normal cooperative behavior of cells. Recent high-throughput genomic studies of cancer cells have shown that the mutational landscape of cancer is complex and that individual cancers…
In recent years, cancer genome sequencing and other high-throughput studies of cancer genomes have generated many notable discoveries. In this review, Novel genomic alteration mechanisms, such as chromothripsis (chromosomal crisis) and…
In this thesis we develop minimal models of the relationship between motility, growth, and evolution of cancer cells. We utilise simple simulations of a population of individual cells in space to examine how changes in mechanical properties…
Immunotherapy has recently shown important clinical successes in a substantial number of oncology indications. Additionally, the tumor somatic mutation load has been shown to associate with response to these therapeutic agents, and specific…
The unwelcome evolution of malignancy during cancer progression emerges through a selection process in a complex heterogeneous population structure. In the present work, we investigate evolutionary dynamics in a phenotypically heterogeneous…
Cancer stem cells are controlled by developmental networks that are often topologically indistinguishable from normal, healthy stem cells. The question is why cancer stem cells can be both phenotypically distinct and have morphological…