Nature articles on evolution and cancer

This week’s Nature has an open access Outlook section “Physical Scientists Take On Cancer.”

Two of the more intriguing articles turn out to be about evolutionary applications to cancer biology.

One is about mathematical modeling.  The other is a short Perspectives piece by Robert Gatenby, Finding Cancer’s First Principles.  The first paragraphs are below.

Robert Gatenby

Dazzling technological advances in molecular biology have transformed the biology of cancer and generated thousands of articles in the burgeoning fields of cancer genomics, proteomics, metabolomics and others. Yet researchers have revealed significant heterogeneity even between cancer cells in the same tumour, leading some to question the clinical value of this vast enterprise. Evolution can cause the genetic profiles in one region to be substantially different to those in distant or even adjacent sites — the conventional solution to this problem is greater investment in molecular technology so that entire cancer populations can be analysed cell by cell.

Now consider a different timeline. Suppose these technological developments had not occurred and we lacked the ability to obtain molecular data on any cancer population. Clearly, we would know less about cancer genetics, but would we also know less about cancer biology? I believe that the answer is “not necessarily”, and that we might actually know more.

Read the whole article here