Sonnenschein Carlos, Soto Ana M
Tufts University School of Medicine, Department of Anatomy and Cellular Biology, 136 Harrison Avenue, Boston, MA 02111, United States.
Semin Cancer Biol. 2008 Oct;18(5):372-7. doi: 10.1016/j.semcancer.2008.03.012. Epub 2008 Mar 26.
Four decades ago Leslie Foulds remarked that "Experimental analysis has produced an alarming mass of empirical facts without providing an adequate language for their communication or effective concepts for their synthesis". Examining the relevance of the data avalanche we all generate and are subjected to in the context of the premises and predictions of the current cancer theories may help resolve this paradox. This goal is becoming increasingly relevant given the looming attempts to rigorously model and parameterize crucial events in carcinogenesis (microenvironmental conditions, cellular proliferation and motility), which will require the adoption of reliable premises on which to base those efforts. This choice must be made a priori, as premises are not testable, and data are not free of the theoretical frame used to gather them. In this review we provide a critical analysis of the two main currents in cancer research, one centered at the cellular level of biological organization, the somatic mutation theory, which conceptualizes carcinogenesis as a problem of cell proliferation control, and the other centered at the tissue level, the tissue organization filed theory, which considers carcinogenesis a process akin to organogenesis gone awry.
四十年前，莱斯利·福尔兹指出：“实验分析产生了大量令人担忧的经验事实，却没有提供用于交流这些事实的适当语言，也没有提供用于综合这些事实的有效概念”。在当前癌症理论的前提和预测背景下，审视我们所有人产生并接触到的数据雪崩的相关性，可能有助于解决这一悖论。鉴于即将进行的对致癌过程中关键事件（微环境条件、细胞增殖和运动）进行严格建模和参数化的尝试，这一目标变得越来越重要，而这些尝试将需要采用可靠的前提来支撑这些努力。这种选择必须事先做出，因为前提是不可检验的，而且数据也并非不受用于收集它们的理论框架的影响。在这篇综述中，我们对癌症研究中的两种主要潮流进行了批判性分析，一种以生物组织的细胞水平为中心，即体细胞突变理论，该理论将致癌作用概念化为细胞增殖控制问题；另一种以组织水平为中心，即组织组织场理论，该理论认为致癌作用是一个类似于器官发生出错的过程。
