Cancer Neuroscience: Establishing a home in Neuro-Oncology

Although neurons innervate all organs in which solid tumors grow, the role of neurons in cancer biology has long been neglected. Over the past decade, numerous studies have elucidated the critical role of the nervous system in cancer pathophysiology, culminating in the birth of Cancer Neuroscience. The recognition that neurons dictate many aspects of tumor biology not only provides new opportunities for therapeutic targeting of these stromal dependencies but also underscores the strong bi-directional relationships between tumors and the nervous system that result in cancer-associated symptomatology. By recognizing the key place of neurons in tumor biology, Cancer Neuroscience has ushered in a new era in which brain cancers should be conceptualized as diseases of dysregulated neurodevelopment, neuroplasticity, and neurophysiological function, usurped to drive brain cancer growth, progression, and therapeutic resistance. Likewise, the nervous system governs the initiation, growth, spread, and survival of most (if not all) extracranial cancers, while also mediating communication from cancers to the brain. Herein, we outline the current state of Cancer Neuroscience and the roles for neuro-oncologists in this new aspect of cancer care as an introduction to an upcoming series of articles in Neuro-Oncology on cellular interactions in the healthy nervous system and in the setting of cancer.