Hallmarks of cancer

[Graham49]

I saw these hallmarks succinctly listed in a 2015 paper and thought they might be of interest.

Self-sufficiency in growth signals (later renamed proliferative signaling)—cancer cells grow at a seemingly unlimited rate.

Insensitivity to antigrowth signals (evading growth suppressors)—cancer cells are not subject to antigrowth signals or withdrawal of normal growth signals.

Evading apoptosis (resisting cell death)—cancer cells avoid the usual process whereby abnormal or redundant cells trigger internal self-destroying (as opposed to cell death) mechanisms.

Limitless replicative potential (enabling replicative immortality)—cancer cells do not senesce (or age) and die after a limited number of cell divisions.

Sustained angiogenesis (inducing angiogenesis)—cancer cells elicit new blood vessels to sustain growth.

Tissue invasion and metastasis (activating invasion and metastasis)—in situ or non-invasive cancers, e.g. ductal carcinoma in situ in the breast or carcinoma in situ in colon polyps, grow into pre-existing spaces but invasive tumors must create a space to expand into normal tissue.

Two enabling characteristics:

Genome instability and mutation, which allows changes in one cell to pass to daughter cells through mutation or epigenetic changes in the parent cell DNA.

Tumor-promoting inflammation, which helps cancer cells grow via the same growth signals normal cells provide to each other during wound healing and embryonic growth; inflammation further contributes to the survival of malignant cells, angiogenesis, metastasis and the subversion of adaptive immunity (24).

Two ‘emerging’ hallmarks:

Avoiding immune destruction whereby tumor cells avoid immune surveillance that would otherwise mark them for destruction.

Dysregulated metabolism, one of the most recognizable features of cancer; its exclusion from the original list of hallmarks (21) probably represented a significant oversight, as it constitutes one of the earliest described hallmarks of cancer (25,26). It is needed to support the increased anabolic and catabolic demands of rapid proliferation and is likely an enabler of cancer development and its other associated hallmarks.

[Graham49]

Thanks Nalakrats for the update. I hope the science comes quickly, but I doubt it will.

[cesces]

This type of cellular dynamic has always made me wonder about whether supplements that fight cellular aptosis are really the best thing for prostate cancer patients to take.

[Graham49]

I guess if a cure was developed then the drug industry would have to severely downsize once the drug was out of patent. It's much better business for them to keep developing slight improvements.

[Tall_Allen]

For an alternative discussion, see the second paragraph:

pcnrv.blogspot.com/2019/12/...