Darwin’s Ideas on Evolution Drive a Radical New Approach to Cancer Drug Use
Principles of evolution and natural selection drive a radical new approach to drugs and prevention strategies By James DeGregori, Robert Gatenby on
- Medical efforts to defeat cancer typically focus on malignant mutations within a cell and administer large doses of toxic drugs in an attempt to eradicate the disease.
- A new concept emphasizes that cancer growth is stimulated by changes outside the cell, alterations in the surrounding tissue that accelerate the evolution of cancerous traits.
- The evolutionary approach, tested in animals and humans with advanced prostate cancer, sharply limits the natural selection of cancer cells through a more judicious use of chemotherapy.
This year at least 31,000 men in the U.S. will be diagnosed with prostate cancer that has spread to other parts of their body, such as bones and lymph nodes. Most of them will be treated by highly skilled and experienced oncologists, who have access to 52 drugs approved to treat this condition. Yet eventually more than three quarters of these men will succumb to their illness.
Cancers that have spread, known as metastatic disease, are rarely curable. The reasons that patients die despite effective treatment are many, but they all trace back to an idea popularized in 1859 by Charles Darwin to explain the rise and fall of species of birds and tortoises. Today we call it evolution./.../
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