Hallmarks of Cancer Gets an Update

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Most cited Cell Article of All Time, " Hallmarks of Cancer " Gets an Update

By Azvolinsky, PhD | April 8, 2011

http://bit.ly/fJhKOJ

snip:

" Enabling Characteristics and Emerging Hallmarks

Hanahan and Weinberg have added two characteristics that confer the

" functional capabilities that allow cancer cells to survive, proliferate,

and disseminate. " The first characteristic is genomic instability, which

facilitates a higher than normal mutation rate and aberrations in the

genome. The second is the immune system's creation of an inflammatory state.

Certain tumors are highly infiltrated with the cells of the immune system

and a picture has emerged whereby immune cells promote tumor progression.

The authors include two hallmarks that may emerge as very important and part

of the core cancer framework they originally created. One is the support of

proliferation via reprogramming of energy metabolism with cells. A second is

the ability of cancer cells to escape the surveillance and attack by the

body's immune system. This latter concept is particularly important in light

of emerging treatments that aim to harness the strength of the immune system

to attack tumors.

Translation of cancer hallmarks into treatments Mechanism-based treatments

are emerging from the last three decades of research on the fundamental

characteristics of tumor evolution.

Targeted therapies, the authors point out, can be categorized by their

effects on one of more cancer hallmarks and their efficacy is a validation

of the importance of a specific capability of a tumor.

Most drug development has been directed toward specific molecular targets.

However, the result of these specific treatments is eventual cancer relapse.

" One interpretation of this history, supported by growing experimental

evidence, is that each of the core hallmark capabilities is regulated by

partially redundant signaling pathways. "

Therefore, the authors argue, inhibition of a single key pathway does not

inhibit the " hallmark capability " and allows adaptation via mutation,

changes of the microenvironment, or epigenetic reprogramming. Prevention of

resistance should be prevented by targeting all of the pathways within a

capability. Cancer cells can also adapt to a treatment by decreasing their

reliance on a specific hallmark that the treatment targets.

Hanahan and Weinberg emphasize the potential to uncover many of the

underlying mechanisms within each hallmark in the foreseeable future. Having

established a conceptual framework by which to organize the myriad of

scientific cancer data we have accrued, they leave the reader with an

enhanced version of their powerful tool.

All the best,

~ Karl

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