Research Proposal

Hi Guys,

So Chris Clark and I are doing a project on the evolutionary aspect of cancer and the various drugs that have recently been developed to target this very aspect of the disease (benign cell boosters, for example). This article http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061117114616.htm provides an interesting discussion of this topic. Here is a brief summary of the article:

Many of the dynamics of evolution (such as natural selection) apply to the environment of a tumor as much as they apply to other traditional topics in evolutionary biology. A population of cancer cells in a tumor can be likened to any population of organisms in which natural selection takes place. Within a population of cancer cells, there is heritable variation (there are a variety of different genetic mutants all of which can divide and pass on their exact mutations to daughter cells) and this variation affects the survivability of each cancer cell (fitness). 

Looking at cancer through the lens of an evolutionary biologist has shed light on the therapeutic resistance of cancer and brought about a new array of possible treatments for the disease. As Carlo C. Maley, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Molecular and Cellular Oncogenesis Program at The Wistar Institute, says, "When you apply chemotherapy to a population of tumor cells, you're quite likely to have a resistant mutant somewhere in that population of billions or even trillions of cells. This is the central problem in oncology. The reason we haven't been able to cure cancer is that we're selecting for resistant tumor cells. When we spray a field with pesticide, we select for resistant pests. It's the same idea." The central idea, or goal, is then to influence the fitness of cancer cells.

One example of a treatment is benign cell boosters, which target benign cells and increase their relative fitness with respect to more malignant cells. As these benign cells outcompete other malignant cancer cells, the tumor would become much less aggressive and dangerous.

One aspect that this article does not mention is the fact that evolution in cancer cells may take anywhere from a few months or years, unlike in the evolution of a new species where it may take thousands of years for evolution to take place.

Reference/citation: The Wistar Institute. "Does Natural Selection Drive The Evolution Of Cancer?." ScienceDaily, 17 Nov. 2006. Web. 12 Apr. 2012.