ArticleEvolutionary applications2013
Evolutionary foundations for cancer biology.
Article in Evolutionary applications, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 94 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
94 citing papers in PubMed, 203 citations in OpenAlex.
- No genome-wide correlations and little shared genetic architecture between reproductive life-history traits and estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer risk.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Studying adaptation at the invisible scale.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Dendritic Cell Therapy in Immuno-Oncology: A Potentially Key Component of Anti-Cancer Immunotherapies.Cancers · 2025Review
- Immune-cancer analyses across mammals reveal a potential trophic level and platelet-linked tradeoff between cancer and trauma mortality.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Epitranscriptomic sculpting: the role of mMedical oncology (Northwood, London, England) · 2025Review
- Article
- The first embryo, the origin of cancer and animal phylogeny. V. Cancer stem cells as the unifying biomechanical principle between embryology and oncology.Mechanobiology in medicine · 2025Review
- The Elephant and the Spandrel.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2025Article
- De novo evolution of transmissible tumours in hydra.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- The complex effects of modern oncogenic environments on the fitness, evolution and conservation of wildlife species.Evolutionary applications · 2024Article
- Origins of cancer: ain't it just mature cells misbehaving?The EMBO journal · 2024Review
- An evolutionary differential game for regulating the role of monoclonal antibodies in treating signalling pathways in oesophageal cancer.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Life history traits and cancer prevalence in birds.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2024Article
- The need for evolutionary theory in cancer research.European journal of epidemiology · 2023Article
- The impact of food availability on tumorigenesis is evolutionarily conserved.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Cancer hygiene hypothesis: A test from wild captive mammals.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- The effect of placentation type, litter size, lactation and gestation length on cancer risk in mammals.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Spontaneously occurring tumors in different wild-derived strains of hydra.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Bridging clinic and wildlife care with AI-powered pan-species computational pathology.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Utilization of Functionalized Metal-Organic Framework Nanoparticle as Targeted Drug Delivery System for Cancer Therapy.Pharmaceutics · 2023Review
34 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
New applications of evolutionary biology are transforming our understanding of cancer. The articles in this special issue provide many specific examples, such as microorganisms inducing cancers, the significance of within-tumor heterogeneity, and the possibility that lower dose chemotherapy may sometimes promote longer survival. Underlying these specific advances is a large-scale transformation, as cancer research incorporates evolutionary methods into its toolkit, and asks new evolutionary questions about why we are vulnerable to cancer. Evolution explains why cancer exists at all, how neoplasms grow, why cancer is remarkably rare, and why it occurs despite powerful cancer suppression mechanisms. Cancer exists because of somatic selection; mutations in somatic cells result in some dividing faster than others, in some cases generating neoplasms. Neoplasms grow, or do not, in complex cellular ecosystems. Cancer is relatively rare because of natural selection; our genomes were derived disproportionally from individuals with effective mechanisms for suppressing cancer. Cancer occurs nonetheless for the same six evolutionary reasons that explain why we remain vulnerable to other diseases. These four principles-cancers evolve by somatic selection, neoplasms grow in complex ecosystems, natural selection has shaped powerful cancer defenses, and the limitations of those defenses have evolutionary explanations-provide a foundation for understanding, preventing, and treating cancer.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.