Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
Centre Cavaillès, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France.
PLoS Biol. 2020 Apr 1;18(4):e3000670. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000670. eCollection 2020 Apr.
Despite over a century of intensive efforts, the great gains promised by the War on Cancer nearly 50 years ago have not materialized. Since 1999, we have analyzed the lack of progress in explaining and "curing" cancer by examining the merits of the premises that determine how cancer is understood and treated. Our ongoing critical analyses have aimed at clarifying the sources of misunderstandings at the root of the cancer puzzle while providing a plausible and comprehensive biomedical perspective as well as a new theory of carcinogenesis that is compatible with evolutionary theory. In this essay, we explain how this new theory, the tissue organization field theory (TOFT), can help chart a path to progress for cancer researchers by explaining features of cancer that remain unexplainable from the perspective of the still hegemonic somatic mutation theory (SMT) and its variants. Of equal significance, the premises underlying the TOFT offer new perspectives on basic biological phenomena.
尽管经过了一个多世纪的深入研究，近 50 年前发起的“抗癌之战”所承诺的巨大收益仍未实现。自 1999 年以来，我们通过分析决定癌症理解和治疗方式的前提的优点，来研究解释和“治愈”癌症方面缺乏进展的原因。我们持续的批判性分析旨在阐明癌症谜题根源处误解的根源，同时提供一个合理且全面的生物医学视角，以及一种与进化理论兼容的新的癌变理论。在这篇文章中，我们解释了这种新的理论，即组织场理论（TOFT），如何通过解释仍然占主导地位的体细胞突变理论（SMT）及其变体无法解释的癌症特征，为癌症研究人员指明前进的道路。同样重要的是，TOFT 所依据的前提为基本生物学现象提供了新的视角。
