The Uniqueness and Ordinariness of Cancer Origin and Pathogenesis: New Epidemiological, Clinical and Preventive Perspectives

BACKGROUND: The article is devoted to a try to reconsider a main paradigm of contemporary oncology, the hypothesis of cancer metastasis. METHODS: The investigation was based on the reassessment of well known data about cancer epidemiology and clinical manifestations from the viewpoint of recent all-pathological, immunological, genetic and evolutionary discoveries. RESULTS: The potentially cancerous cell clones settled a human body as a result of crossbreeding between persons with partially different genomes. The clones appeared in the body before postnatal ontogenesis and for many decades exist in it as multiple but smallest stochastically distributed cell populations. But at relevant time of individual life (mainly after 40 years of age), according to own specific programs of the clone ontogenesis, it begin to multiple uncontrolled thus initiating the cancerous growth being unregulated by usual cyto-ecological agents owned by affected body. Its cells come into sight as constitutionally immune to normal regulators of cell reproduction and tissue growth. CONCLUSIONS: The new notion provides a framework for understanding the epidemic nature of cancer and its rising incidence both in the developed world and in developing countries. It forces also to reassess the means and methods of cancer healing. What is more, it accents the possibility of genetic methods for the prevention of epidemic spread of the disease. KEYWORDS: Cancer epidemiology; Cancer pathogenesis; Genetics of cancer origin; Genetic immunity; Molecular physiological regulation