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The Cheating Cell: How Evolution Helps Us Understand and Treat Cancer

In a landmark paper published in 2000, the cancer biologists Douglas Hanahan and Robert Weinberg synthesized decades of investigation in tumor biology to identify six core capabilities acquired by cancer cells during the development and progression of human malignancies. According to their schema, the hallmarks of cancer include sustained proliferation, evading growth suppressors, resisting cell death (apoptosis), enabling replicative immortality, inducing angiogenesis (formation of new blood vessels) and activating invasion and metastasis [ 1 ]. Later updated in a follow-up publication to include common tumor characteristics such as abnormal metabolism and the ability to evade the immune system [ 2 ], the hallmark papers are now among the most cited in the history of cancer research and have provided a set of organizing principles for both basic and clinical investigators. Athena Aktipis, in her book The Cheating Cell: How Evolution Helps Us Understand and Treat Cancer , urges us to go beyond the hallmarks to understand cancer—and, in so doing, to conceive of new ways to prevent and treat the disease. She makes a compelling case that insights from evolutionary biology and ecology

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