Shlyakhtina Yelyzaveta, Moran Katherine L, Portal Maximiliano M
Cell Plasticity and Epigenetics Lab. Cancer Research UK-Manchester Institute, The University of Manchester, Alderley Park, SK10 4TG, UK.
Cancers (Basel). 2021 Mar 18;13(6):1380. doi: 10.3390/cancers13061380.
Cancer development can be defined as a process of cellular and tissular microevolution ultimately leading to malignancy. Strikingly, though this concept has prevailed in the field for more than a century, the precise mechanisms underlying evolutionary processes occurring within tumours remain largely uncharacterized and rather cryptic. Nevertheless, although our current knowledge is fragmentary, data collected to date suggest that most tumours display features compatible with a diverse array of evolutionary paths, suggesting that most of the existing macro-evolutionary models find their avatar in cancer biology. Herein, we discuss an up-to-date view of the fundamental genetic and non-genetic mechanisms underlying tumour evolution with the aim of concurring into an integrated view of the evolutionary forces at play throughout the emergence and progression of the disease and into the acquisition of resistance to diverse therapeutic paradigms. Our ultimate goal is to delve into the intricacies of genetic and non-genetic networks underlying tumour evolution to build a framework where both core concepts are considered non-negligible and equally fundamental.
癌症发展可被定义为一个细胞和组织微观进化的过程，最终导致恶性肿瘤。引人注目的是，尽管这一概念在该领域已盛行一个多世纪，但肿瘤内发生的进化过程的精确机制在很大程度上仍未得到充分描述且相当神秘。然而，尽管我们目前的知识是零散的，但迄今为止收集的数据表明，大多数肿瘤表现出与多种进化路径相符的特征，这表明大多数现有的宏观进化模型在癌症生物学中都有其体现。在此，我们讨论肿瘤进化背后基本遗传和非遗传机制的最新观点，目的是就疾病发生和发展过程中发挥作用的进化力量以及对不同治疗模式的耐药性获得形成一个综合观点。我们的最终目标是深入探究肿瘤进化背后遗传和非遗传网络的复杂性，以构建一个核心概念都被视为不可忽视且同样重要的框架。
