Ideas in Theoretical Biology - Failure of Anti-Tumor Immunity in Mammals - Evolution of the Hypothesis

Abstract

Observations on the morphological and functional similarity between embryonic or trophoblast tissues and tumors are very old. Over a period of time many investigators have created different hypotheses on the origin of cancerogenesis or tumor efficiency in relation to the host immune system. Some of these ideas have been rejected but many of them are still current. A presumption of the inefficiency of anti-tumor immunity in mammals due to the high similarity between trophoblast and embryonic cells to tumor cells is very real. The mechanisms for the escape of tumors from the immune response are very similar to the mechanisms for the escape of a fetoplacental unit from the maternal immune response. The similarity between these two mechanisms is so great that any randomness must be banished. At the same time, an incidence of malignant tumors and the types of more frequent tumors in non-mammalian vertebrates is significantly different to that in mammals. Lastly, the mechanisms of anti-tumor immunity in mammals are substantially different from the mechanisms of anti-tumor immunity in other classes of vertebrates. These facts indicate that the immune system of mammals during anti-tumor immune response is tricked by the similarity between tumor cells and trophoblast or other placental cells. From this aspect, our conclusion is that anti-tumor immunity failure in mammals can be defined as an immunoreproductive phenomenon, which is developed under the evolutionary pressure of autoimmunity and reproductive effectiveness.

Human embryo immune escape mechanisms rediscovered by the tumor

“…It is obvious that some of these genes have been used by the embryo to make its primordial escape from the maternal immune system (Bubanovic and Najman, 2004), and this paper focuses on this special relationship between embryo/tumor and the immune system in an attempt to shed light on the behavior of the tumor-host interaction.…”

The Coevolution of Placentation and Cancer

“…The field of evolutionary or comparative cancer biology is a relatively recent development, which arose largely around the turn from the twentieth to the twenty-first century (14)(15)(16)(17)(18). Before that, evolutionary thought with respect to cancer was limited to the rather obvious fact that cancer is a breakdown of multicellular organization (e.g., 19,20).…”

Quantitative proteomics reveals the novel co-expression signatures in early brain development for prognosis of glioblastoma multiforme

“…The behavior of tumor cells in terms of growth, infiltration and suppression of immune system is similar to embryonic cells [ 14 , 15 ]. Moreover, the mechanisms of antigenic loss, production of immunosuppressive cytokines and induction of apoptosis in infiltrating lymphocytes are the same as those found in embryonic cells [ 16 , 17 ]. Thus, analysis the characteristics of brain developmental process may be able to provide useful information for the development of new integrated cancer therapeutic strategies and discovering novel prognosis markers.…”