Carcinogenesis: evolution of concepts.
Cancer is considered as an unintended consequence of internal imperfection of multicellular organisms: Darwinian evolution "does not foresee the future and does not plan for it", it is forced to handle only anything that it has at a given moment "at hand", which makes inevitable compromises and restrictions. In this case, there are a number of founding dogmas including mutagenesis as the main driving force of carcinogenesis; the environment as the main source of mutagenic effects; tumor monoclonality; cancer cell multistage transformation as Darwinian process of successive mutation-selection cycles. Recent discoveries complicate, supplement, and sometimes transform into an opposite fixed concepts. As a result, a new "image" of carcinogenesis is formed as a biological phenomenon whose conservation is indicative of its evolutionary utility.
Lichtenstein
A V
AV
Blokhin Russian Cancer Research Center, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Moscow, 115478, Russia. alicht@online.ru
D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D006801:Humans; D016296:Mutagenesis; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000209:etiology* / Q000235:genetics / Q000473:pathology; D009385:Neoplastic Processes