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The
biological sense of cancer: a hypothesis
Raul A.
Ruggiero* and Oscar D.
Bustuoabad
División Medicina
Experimental, Instituto de Investigaciones Hematológicas, Academia
Nacional de Medicina de Buenos Aires, Pacheco de Melo 3081, 1425
Buenos Aires, Argentina -- *Corresponding Author: E-mail: Raúl A.
Ruggiero - ruloruggiero@yahoo.com.ar
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Background.
Most theories about cancer proposed during the last century
share a common denominator: cancer is believed to be a biological
nonsense for the organism in which it originates, since cancer cells
are believed to be ones evading the rules that control normal cell
proliferation and differentiation.
In this essay, we have challenged
this interpretation on the basis that, throughout the animal kingdom,
cancer seems to arise only in injured organs and tissues that display
lost or diminished regenerative ability.
Hypothesis. According to our
hypothesis, a tumor cell would be the only one able to respond to the
demand to proliferate in the organ of origin.
It would be surrounded
by normal aged cells that cannot respond to that signal.
According to
this interpretation, cancer would have a profound biological sense: it
would be the ultimate way to attempt to restore organ functions and
structures that have been lost or altered by aging or noxious
environmental agents.
In this way, the features commonly associated
with tumor cells could be reinterpreted as progressively acquired
adaptations for responding to a permanent regenerative signal in the
context of tissue injury.
Analogously, several embryo developmental
stages could be dependent on cellular damage and death, which together
disrupt the field topography.
However, unlike normal structures,
cancer would have no physiological value, because the usually poor or
non-functional nature of its cells would make their reparative task
unattainable.
Conclusion.
The hypothesis advanced in this essay might have significant
practical implications.
All conventional therapies against cancer
attempt to kill all cancer cells.
However, according to our
hypothesis, the problem might not be solved even if all the tumor
cells were eradicated.
In effect, if the organ failure remained, new
tumor cells would emerge and the tumor would reinitiate its
progressive growth in response to the permanent regenerative signal of
the non-restored organ.
Therefore, efficient anti-cancer therapy
should combine an attack against the tumor cells themselves with the
correction of the organ failure, which, according to this hypothesis,
is fundamental to the origin of the cancer.
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