Cancer and super-regeneration inTriturus viridescens limbs

Ruben, Laurens N.; Balls, M.; Stevens, Jean M.

doi:10.1007/bf01900949

Cited by 7 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…It has been long known that regeneration and cancer are closely related [147][148][149][150][151][152]. Highly-regenerative organisms are resistant to carcinogenesis and indeed activating regenerative response (figure 1(D)) can normalize existing tumors [147][148][149][150][152][153][154][155][156], although this does not always occur [157].…”

Section: Cancer As a Disease Of Anatomical Homeostasismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Highly-regenerative organisms are resistant to carcinogenesis and indeed activating regenerative response (figure 1(D)) can normalize existing tumors [147][148][149][150][152][153][154][155][156], although this does not always occur [157]. The inverse relationship between regeneration and cancer susceptibility [72,158] is more compatible with the importance of morphogenetic field guidance than with cancer risk associated with the presence of highly-active, undifferentiated cells [68].…”

Section: Cancer As a Disease Of Anatomical Homeostasismentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cancer as a disorder of patterning information: computational and biophysical perspectives on the cancer problem

Moore

Walker

Levin

2017

Converg. Sci. Phys. Oncol.

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TOPICAL REVIEWCancer as a disorder of patterning information: computational and biophysical perspectives on the cancer problem IntroductionCancer is well-recognized not only as an extremely pernicious medical problem, but also as a group of phenomena deeply connected to the fundamental questions of evolution, multicellularity, pattern (disregulation, and the interplay between the genome and the environment [1,2]. Two fundamental paradigms currently divide the field. One is that cancer results from disorders of genetics: cancer cells are fundamentally broken due to genomic mutation or instability, and their clonal progeny form tumors and metastases. This view is sometimes called the SMT, somatic mutation theory [3][4][5]. A competing perspective is that of cancer as a circuit disease-a disorder of the complex biophysical, transcriptional, and epigenetic dynamics that regulate cellular state and the ability of cells to cooperate in vivo [6][7][8]. Under this view (sometimes called the tissue organization field theory or TOFT, [9,10]), cancer is akin to a traffic jam [11]-the problem is not a permanent discrete alteration within a founder cell and all of its clonal descendants, but an undesirable stable attractor in the complex network of controls that normally guides anatomical homeostasis [12].The relative merits of the two models have been discussed extensively [10,[13][14][15][16][17] AbstractThe current paradigm views cancer as arising clonally from a degradation of genetic information in single cells. A complementary perspective, originating at the dawn of modern developmental biology, is that cancer is the result of a system disorder of algorithms that normally orchestrate individual cell activities toward specific anatomical structures and away from tumorigenesis. A view of cancer as a disease of geometry focuses on the pathways that allow cells to cooperate to build and maintain large-scale anatomical patterning. Cancer may result when cells stop maintaining higher-order structures and reduce the boundary of their computational selves to a single-cell level, reverting to a unicellular lifestyle in which the rest of the organism is merely part of the environment at the expense of which all living things survive. While this view has been widely discussed, little progress has been made in providing a quantitative, mechanistic framework within which this perspective's specific and unique implications for treatment strategies can be tested and biomedically exploited. Here, we highlight two recent areas of progress which may facilitate much-needed progress on the cancer problem. First, we review the roles that endogenous bioelectrical networks, operating across many tissues in vivo, play as a medium of information processing in tumor suppression, progression, and reprogramming. Second, we provide a primer to the development of computational theory and tools for quantifying the information and causal control structures in cancer and other complex biological systems. Rigorous mathematical formalisms now exist to...

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Section: Cancer As a Disease Of Anatomical Homeostasismentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Cancer As a Disease Of Anatomical Homeostasismentioning

confidence: 99%

Cancer as a disorder of patterning information: computational and biophysical perspectives on the cancer problem

Moore

Walker

Levin

2017

Converg. Sci. Phys. Oncol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It has been long known that regeneration and cancer are closely related [396–401]. Highly-regenerative organisms are resistant to carcinogenesis and indeed activating regenerative response can normalize existing tumors [396–399,401–405], although this does not always occur [406].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Highly-regenerative organisms are resistant to carcinogenesis and indeed activating regenerative response can normalize existing tumors [396–399,401–405], although this does not always occur [406]. The inverse relationship between regeneration and cancer susceptibility [407,408] is more compatible with the importance of morphogenetic field guidance than with cancer risk associated with the presence of highly-active, undifferentiated cells [18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Endogenous Voltage Potentials and the Microenvironment: Bioelectric Signals that Reveal, Induce and Normalize Cancer

Chernet¹,

Levin²

2014

J Clin Exp Oncol

137

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Cancer may be a disease of geometry: a misregulation of the field of information that orchestrates individual cells’ activities towards normal anatomy. Recent work identified molecular mechanisms underlying a novel system of developmental control: bioelectric gradients. Endogenous spatio-temporal differences in resting potential of non-neural cells provide instructive cues for cell regulation and complex patterning during embryogenesis and regeneration. It is now appreciated that these cues are an important layer of the dysregulation of cell: cell interactions that leads to cancer. Abnormal depolarization of resting potential (Vmem) is a convenient marker for neoplasia and activates a metastatic phenotype in genetically-normal cells in vivo. Moreover, oncogene expression depolarizes cells that form tumor-like structures, but is unable to form tumors if this depolarization is artificially prevented by misexpression of hyperpolarizing ion channels. Vmem triggers metastatic behaviors at considerable distance, mediated by transcriptional and epigenetic effects of electrically-modulated flows of serotonin and butyrate. While in vivo data on voltages in carcinogenesis comes mainly from the amphibian model, unbiased genetic screens and network profiling in rodents and human tissues reveal several ion channel proteins as bona fide oncogene and promising targets for cancer drug development. However, we propose that a focus on specific channel genes is just the tip of the iceberg. Bioelectric state is determined by post-translational gating of ion channels, not only from genetically-specified complements of ion translocators. A better model is a statistical dynamics view of spatial Vmem gradients. Cancer may not originate at the single cell level, since gap junctional coupling results in multi-cellular physiological networks with multiple stable attractors in bioelectrical state space. New medical applications await a detailed understanding of the mechanisms by which organ target morphology stored in real-time patterns of ion flows is perceived or mis-perceived by cells. Mastery of somatic voltage gradients will lead to cancer normalization or rebooting strategies, such as those that occur in regenerating and embryonic organs, resulting in transformative advances in basic biology and oncology.

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Morphogenetic fields in embryogenesis, regeneration, and cancer: Non-local control of complex patterning

2012

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Establishment of shape during embryonic development, and the maintenance of shape against injury or tumorigenesis, requires constant coordination of cell behaviors toward the patterning needs of the host organism. Molecular cell biology and genetics have made great strides in understanding the mechanisms that regulate cell function. However, generalized rational control of shape is still largely beyond our current capabilities. Significant instructive signals function at long range to provide positional information and other cues to regulate organism-wide systems properties like anatomical polarity and size control. Is complex morphogenesis best understood as the emergent property of local cell interactions, or as the outcome of a computational process that is guided by a physically-encoded map or template of the final goal state? Here I review recent data and molecular mechanisms relevant to morphogenetic fields: large-scale systems of physical properties that have been proposed to store patterning information during embryogenesis, regenerative repair, and cancer suppression that ultimately controls anatomy. Placing special emphasis on the role of endogenous bioelectric signals as an important component of the morphogenetic field, I speculate on novel approaches for the computational modeling and control of these fields with applications to synthetic biology, regenerative medicine, and evolutionary developmental biology.

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Cancer and super-regeneration inTriturus viridescens limbs

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Cancer as a disorder of patterning information: computational and biophysical perspectives on the cancer problem

Cancer as a disorder of patterning information: computational and biophysical perspectives on the cancer problem

Endogenous Voltage Potentials and the Microenvironment: Bioelectric Signals that Reveal, Induce and Normalize Cancer

Morphogenetic fields in embryogenesis, regeneration, and cancer: Non-local control of complex patterning

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