[Cellular adaptation and cancerogenesis]

The paper describes the main adaptive mechanisms involved in the carcinogenic process. As a result of the action of carcinogenic agents (physical, chemical, biological), and in relation to the functional status of the affected cells, a number of systems are triggered off: detoxification and conjugation systems, the metabolisation of the said agents, DNA repairing enzymes, increased shock proteins (HSP), the induction of clonal proliferation. All these systems are valuable to the survival of the body and the species and culminate in the apoptosis of damaged cells as the last attempt at adaptation of a social kind for the good of the body. When these compensation mechanisms prove ineffective, imprecise or are exceeded by cell adaptive capacity, the resulting structural and functional alterations trigger off (induction) a very long process which often lasts between one and two thirds of the body's life, in various stages, multistep and multifactorial: this neoplastic transformation leads to a purposeless, egoistic, anarchic proliferation of cells which wish to survive at all costs, even to the detriment of the body of which they form part. Following the exhaustion of cell adaptive defences, there is an accumulation of additional genetic alterations (promotion and progression), the cells become manifestly neoplastic and continue their egoistic adaptation, according to the laws of natural selection: the cells which survive are those which adapt best to the hostile environment of the host's body, which are unaffected by proliferation control mechanisms (contact inhibition, differentiation factors, apoptosis, etc.), which make the best of the growth factors present in their microenvironment, which accomplish the so-called decathlon of the metastatization process, namely acquiring new capacities which can overcome the basal membrane, invade tissues to which they are attracted and continue to proliferate. Manifestly neoplastic cells become not self at a later stage, managing to escape the immune system using various adaptive mechanisms which induce immune tolerance/anergy. From this point of view, cancer may be regarded as an incidental factor in the host's cell adaptation processes; the latter are much more important from a biological point of view and their absence is incompatible with life: cancer might therefore be regarded as a cell adaptation pathology.