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What is Cancer?02:12

What is Cancer?

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Cells and tissues must meticulously coordinate their activities for the normal functioning of the human body. Therefore, they exhibit socially responsible behavior - resting, growing, dividing, differentiating, or dying - for the organism’s benefit. Cancer arises when cells divide uncontrollably and invade other tissues or organs.
Although people have known about cancer for centuries, it was only in 1761 that Giovanni Morgagni of Padua performed a detailed autopsy of...
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Cancer arises from mutations in the critical genes that allow healthy cells to escape cell cycle regulation and acquire the ability to proliferate indefinitely. Though originating from a single mutation event in one of the originator cells, cancer progresses when the mutant cell lines continue to gain more and more mutations, and finally, become malignant. For example, chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) develops initially as a non-lethal increase in white blood cells, which progressively...
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Aug 24, 2025

3D Cell-Printed Hypoxic Cancer-on-a-Chip for Recapitulating Pathologic Progression of Solid Cancer
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Reimagining Cancer: Moving from the Cellular to the Tissue Level.

Romano Demicheli1, William J M Hrushesky2,3

  • 1Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences (DIBIC) "L. Sacco" & DSRC, LITA Vialba Campus, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milano, Italy.

Cancer Research
|October 20, 2022
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

The somatic mutation theory of cancer is limited. New research views tumors as organized communities, proposing "cancer attractors" to understand tissue-level cancer behavior.

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Area of Science:

  • Oncology
  • Systems Biology
  • Cancer Research

Background:

  • The dominant somatic mutation theory explains cancer as cell-centered, focusing on gene mutations irrespective of environmental context.
  • Tumors exhibit complex, organized structures with diverse cell populations, mirroring normal tissue organization and behavior.
  • Existing theories are beginning to shift focus to tissue-level cancer dynamics, necessitating complex systems approaches.

Approach:

  • Reviewing normal tissue self-organization principles, including temporal and spatial adaptive behaviors.
  • Extending regulatory network analysis to the tissue level to model cancer dynamics.
  • Introducing the concept of "cancer attractors" to describe emergent tissue-level properties.

Key Points:

  • Cancer is viewed as an integrated neoplastic community, not just individual mutated cells.
  • Normal tissue organization and self-organization provide a framework for understanding tumor behavior.
  • "Cancer attractors" offer a new paradigm for analyzing complex tissue-level cancer dynamics.
  • This approach challenges the traditional reductionist view in cancer molecular biology.

Conclusions:

  • A paradigm shift from cell-centered to tissue-level analysis is crucial for understanding cancer.
  • The concept of "cancer attractors" provides a novel framework for cancer research.
  • Reevaluation of cancer imaging and investigation methods is needed to align with complex systems principles.