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Eco‐oncology: Applying ecological principles to understand and manage cancer

Cancer is a disease of single cells that expresses itself at the population level. The striking similarities between initiation and growth of tumors and dynamics of biological populations, and between metastasis and ecological invasion and community dynamics suggest that oncology can benefit from an...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Reynolds, Brent A., Oli, Monika W., Oli, Madan K.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7452771/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32884638
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6590
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author Reynolds, Brent A.
Oli, Monika W.
Oli, Madan K.
author_facet Reynolds, Brent A.
Oli, Monika W.
Oli, Madan K.
author_sort Reynolds, Brent A.
collection PubMed
description Cancer is a disease of single cells that expresses itself at the population level. The striking similarities between initiation and growth of tumors and dynamics of biological populations, and between metastasis and ecological invasion and community dynamics suggest that oncology can benefit from an ecological perspective to improve our understanding of cancer biology. Tumors can be viewed as complex, adaptive, and evolving systems as they are spatially and temporally heterogeneous, continually interacting with each other and with the microenvironment and evolving to increase the fitness of the cancer cells. We argue that an eco‐evolutionary perspective is essential to understand cancer biology better. Furthermore, we suggest that ecologically informed therapeutic approaches that combine standard of care treatments with strategies aimed at decreasing the evolutionary potential and fitness of neoplastic cells, such as disrupting cell‐to‐cell communication and cooperation, and preventing successful colonization of distant organs by migrating cancer cells, may be effective in managing cancer as a chronic condition.
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spelling pubmed-74527712020-09-02 Eco‐oncology: Applying ecological principles to understand and manage cancer Reynolds, Brent A. Oli, Monika W. Oli, Madan K. Ecol Evol Reviews Cancer is a disease of single cells that expresses itself at the population level. The striking similarities between initiation and growth of tumors and dynamics of biological populations, and between metastasis and ecological invasion and community dynamics suggest that oncology can benefit from an ecological perspective to improve our understanding of cancer biology. Tumors can be viewed as complex, adaptive, and evolving systems as they are spatially and temporally heterogeneous, continually interacting with each other and with the microenvironment and evolving to increase the fitness of the cancer cells. We argue that an eco‐evolutionary perspective is essential to understand cancer biology better. Furthermore, we suggest that ecologically informed therapeutic approaches that combine standard of care treatments with strategies aimed at decreasing the evolutionary potential and fitness of neoplastic cells, such as disrupting cell‐to‐cell communication and cooperation, and preventing successful colonization of distant organs by migrating cancer cells, may be effective in managing cancer as a chronic condition. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2020-07-29 /pmc/articles/PMC7452771/ /pubmed/32884638 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6590 Text en © 2020 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Reviews
Reynolds, Brent A.
Oli, Monika W.
Oli, Madan K.
Eco‐oncology: Applying ecological principles to understand and manage cancer
title Eco‐oncology: Applying ecological principles to understand and manage cancer
title_full Eco‐oncology: Applying ecological principles to understand and manage cancer
title_fullStr Eco‐oncology: Applying ecological principles to understand and manage cancer
title_full_unstemmed Eco‐oncology: Applying ecological principles to understand and manage cancer
title_short Eco‐oncology: Applying ecological principles to understand and manage cancer
title_sort eco‐oncology: applying ecological principles to understand and manage cancer
topic Reviews
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7452771/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32884638
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6590
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