title: Cancer and the endogenous "pineal clock": a means of early diagnosis and successful treatment as well as prevention of cancers.
abstract: The majority of chronic diseases, most notably those accompanying aging, result from progressive deterioration of central neuroimmunoendocrine control, often referred to as immunological surveillance. This is as true of cancer as it is of the development of cardiovascular, autoimmune, and neurodegenerative disease, in all of these immunological surveillance break downs, leading to an unraveling of the neuroimmunoendocrine process that inhibits proliferation of preneoplastic and neoplastic cells already existing in the body. The onset of cancer is anticipated by changes in the hormonalimmune coordination resulting in chronic quantitative alterations in the synthesis and release of hormones and the loss of the natural synchronicity of that release, which occurs according to circadian rhythms in the healthy organism, principally under the control of the pineal network. Periodic circadian hormonal release is the source of immune system regulation, thus altering hormone rhythms impairs the immune system's ability to maintain control over emerging tumor cells, not necessarily to eliminate them, but to inhibit proliferation. Malignancy, then, is the result of suppression of or interference with the regular release of hormones that maintain strict regulation of the thymo-lymphatic immune system's maturation and activity. This understanding means that we can act to prevent cancer by means of efficiently monitoring and maintenance of physiological hormonal values. For the cyclic synthesis of malignancies that are metastasized, a means of xenogeneic bone marrow transplantation is proposed as an alternative therapeutic approach.
authors.affiliation: INTERBION Foundation for Basic Biomedical Research, Riazzino, Switzerland. pierpaoli.fnd@bluewin.ch
authors.forename: Walter
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Pierpaoli
mesh_terms: D000375:Aging / Q000276:immunology / Q000502:physiology; D000818:Animals; D016026:Bone Marrow Transplantation; D002940:Circadian Rhythm / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007157:Immunologic Surveillance; D008550:Melatonin / Q000502:physiology; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology* / Q000628:therapy; D015213:Neuroimmunomodulation; D010870:Pineal Gland / Q000503:physiopathology*; D023041:Xenograft Model Antitumor Assays
chemical_list: D008550:Melatonin