Cancer as a form of life: Musings of the cancer and evolution symposium☆

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2021.05.003Get rights and content

Abstract

Advanced cancer is one of the major problems in oncology as currently, despite the recent technological and scientific advancements, the mortality of metastatic disease remains very high at 70–90%. The field of oncology is in urgent need of novel ideas in order to improve quality of life and prognostic of cancer patients. The Cancer and Evolution Symposium organized online October 14–16, 2020 brought together a group of specialists from different fields that presented innovative strategies for better understanding, preventing, diagnosing, and treating cancer. Today still, the main reasons behind the high incidence and mortality of advanced cancer are, on one hand, the paucity of funding and effort directed to cancer prevention and early detection, and, on the other hand, the lack of understanding of the cancer process itself. I argue that besides being a disease, cancer is also a form of life, and, this frame of reference may provide a fresh look on this complex process. Here, I provide a different angle to several contemporary cancer theories discussing them from the perspective of “cancer-forms of life” (i.e. bionts) point of view. The perspectives and the several “bionts” introduced here, by no means exclusive or comprehensive, are just a shorthand that will hopefully encourage the readers, to further explore the contemporary oncology theoretical landscape.

Section snippets

Early diagnosis

The first speaker, Azra Raza, the author of the “The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last”, a deeply moving exploration of cancer from multiple perspectives, (Raza, 2019), proposed the use of new technologies like circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) (Cohen et al., 2018), circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and DNA methylation, to detect cancers at an early stage. She also suggested that an earlier stage detection will lead to improvement of cancer survival. For some cancer types,

Cancer prevention

The best way to address cancer is, of course, to prevent its initiation in the first place. Several personal life style changes can decrease cancer incidence and recurrence including exercise, dietary changes, weight reduction and smoking cessation. According to American Cancer Society, in the United State, smoking cessation alone can prevent 480,000 yearly cancer deaths (ACS website).

A futuristic perspective of cancer prevention was introduced by George Church who presented several

Understanding cancer as a form of life

The March 28, 2014 cover of Newskeek magazine read “you can't cure what you can't understand” alluding to the fact that the main reason behind our failure to find a cure for cancer is our lack of deep understanding of the cancer process.

The Cancer and Evolution symposium was mainly an effort in bringing forth several ideas that may be implemented in the near future and improve cancer prognostic by adopting novel, more efficient paradigms.

A suggestive analogy between the Cambrian explosion of

Three perspectives

To classify the bionts presented below, first I divided them in two broad categories according to two perspectives familiar to the physics community: the substantivalist approach, focused mostly on material entities and structures, and, the relationist approach, focused on the relationships between them. This dichotomy that became popular since the Newton-Leibnitz debate on the nature of space-time (Pooley, 2013) is highly significant also for biology as has been pointed out by Denis Noble

Cancer as an abnormal growth

The oncobiont The Latin term “oncos” means “swelling, growth” and was introduced by Galen in the second century to refer to tumors and cancer, in general. Even though the phenomenon of metastasis has been known for several centuries (Weiss, 2000), until recently, cancer treatment has been focused mainly on growth inhibition.

For a long time, growth has been considered the main cancer characteristic. As recent as in 2000, in the frequently cited hallmarks of cancer article, Hanahan and Weinberg,

Cancer as a temporal disease. The chronobiont

If an organism is akin to a symphony in which cells, tissues and organs interact harmoniously, as described in “The music of life” (Noble, 2006), cancer can be viewed as a disharmonious process in dissonance with the rest of the organism. Life is a process sculpted by two complementary temporal forces: evolution and development and, in cancer, both these forces are at work.

Cancer cells are asynchronous with the tissue where they originate and with the rest of the organism. It has been known for

A systems biology look at cancer. The logobiont

Logos in Greek means “word,” “reason,” or “plan” and cancer can also be seen on one hand as a communication disorder between cancer and different normal organism components either at the tissular or the organismic level, or as a disease following a different plan than the normal organism blue print. The importance of communication for understanding life, and, by extension, cancer, has been discussed in a series of papers by Guenther Witzany (Witzany, 2010, 2020; Baluška and Witzany, 2014). In

Cancer as an unknown life form. The cryptobiont (from “crypto” Greek, hidden, secret)

All theories presented above each with its own explanatory strengths, should not make us forget that a real comprehensive “theory of cancer” does not yet exist. Why? We started our investigation into the nature of cancer, and we described various “forms-of-life” i.e. “bionts”. However, fundamentally, we do not know what life is, and, we cannot solve a mystery by introducing an even deeper one. Like the wise men in the old Buddhist parable about touching an elephant in a dark room and trying to

Conclusion

The Cancer and Evolution Symposium demonstrated the power of transdisciplinary collaboration. The plethora of perspectives brought by the different experts-speakers created a strong inspirational momentum prompting the organizers to initiate a series of conferences that will likely benefit in the future both the fields of cancer and evolution.

Cancer continues to be a leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for nearly 10 million deaths in 2020 (WHO website). The therapeutic landscape of

Author statement

Please note that the work submitted has not been published previously, it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, its publication is approved by its author and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically without the written consent of the copyrightholder.

Declaration of competing interest

The author declare that they have no competing financial interests or personal relationships that could be perceived to have influenced the work reported in this paper.

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    This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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