Cancer Evolution

In which I complete one project and promptly commit myself to more hard blogging...

Cancers evolve. That's something that I hope to show you over the course of a couple dozen posts -- "a landmark new series," as the BBC would describe it. I'd like to show you why and how cancers evolve, how the evolution of cancers compares to the evolution of populations and species, and also discuss the adaptations that tumours commonly stumble upon. There will be genetics, genomics, molecular, cellular, developmental and systems biology, amongst medicine, surgery, and pharmacology. There should also be a few tales of how the science was done, and who did it.

The first two posts will describe the very basics -- an easy catch-up course for those unfamiliar with biology. Those who already know their oncogenes and tumour suppressors, cell-cycle checkpoints and DNA-repair pathways, can skip the first. Those with a basic grasp of evolution, from the point of view of genes, individuals, populations, and environment, can pass on the second.

Later, half-a-dozen or so posts will look at the details of cancer evolution: the micro-environment of the tumour, and the selection pressures it produces; how tumour evolution looks in terms of population; tumour cell biology, and the Knudsen multi-hit hypothesis; cancer cytogenetics and chromosomal instability; controversial hypotheses of cancer "stem cells"; and cancer epigenetics.

Then there are the adaptations that we see in cancer, why we see them, and how the biology is of relevance in diagnosis and treatment. We'll discuss, over a number of posts, loss of DNA checkpoints and repair, disregulation of cell growth and division, loss of cell death, gain of anaerobic respiration and the raiding of sugar stores, new blood vessel growth, evasion of the immune system, invasion and metastasis, and finally drug resistance.

So join me in a celebration of the simple principles that Darwin discovered in the 19th century, and which save lives in the 21st.