ReviewEvolution, medicine, and public health2014
Malignant cancer and invasive placentation: A case for positive pleiotropy between endometrial and malignancy phenotypes.
Review in Evolution, medicine, and public health, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 41 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
41 citing papers in PubMed, 59 citations in OpenAlex.
- Time-of-day difference in iron supplementation in iron-deficient pregnant model mice.NPJ science of food · 2026Article
- Stromal resistance to placental invasion is a derived trait in ruminants.The Journal of reproduction and development · 2026Review
- The duality of microchimerism and cancer in parous women: a review and evolutionary perspective.Seminars in immunopathology · 2025Review
- Case Report: Breast cancer in pregnancy with placental metastasis.Frontiers in oncology · 2025Article
- A common allele increases endometrial Wnt4 expression, with antagonistic implications for pregnancy, reproductive cancers, and endometriosis.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Experimental and phylogenetic evidence for correlated gene expression evolution in endometrial and skin fibroblasts.iScience · 2024Article
- Article
- Placenta: an old organ with new functions.Frontiers in immunology · 2024Review
- The effect of placentation type, litter size, lactation and gestation length on cancer risk in mammals.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- The Mystery of Cancer Resistance: A Revelation Within Nature.Journal of molecular evolution · 2023Review
- Review
- Cancer Is Associated with the Emergence of Placenta-Reactive Autoantibodies.Biomedicines · 2023Article
- The value of broad taxonomic comparisons in evolutionary medicine: Disease is not a trait but aMedComm · 2022Article
- Tracing the cis-regulatory changes underlying the endometrial control of placental invasion.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Evolution of higher mesenchymal CD44 expression in the human lineage: A gene linked to cancer malignancy.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2022Article
- Transposable elements shape the evolution of mammalian development.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2021Review
- Review
- Evolved Resistance to Placental Invasion Secondarily Confers Increased Survival in Melanoma Patients.Journal of clinical medicine · 2021Article
- Targeting the Dysfunctional Placenta to Improve Pregnancy Outcomes Based on Lessons Learned in Cancer.Clinical therapeutics · 2021Review
- Medawar and the immunological paradox of pregnancy: in context.Oxford open immunology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cancer metastasis is an invasive process that involves the transplantation of cells into new environments. Since human placentation is also invasive, hypotheses about a relationship between invasive placentation in eutherian mammals and metastasis have been proposed. The relationship between metastatic cancer and invasive placentation is usually presented in terms of antagonistic pleiotropy. According to this hypothesis, evolution of invasive placentation also established the mechanisms for cancer metastasis. Here, in contrast, we argue that the secondary evolution of less invasive placentation in some mammalian lineages may have resulted in positive pleiotropic effects on cancer survival by lowering malignancy rates. These positive pleiotropic effects would manifest themselves as resistance to cancer cell invasion. To provide a preliminary test of this proposal, we re-analyze data from Priester and Mantel (Occurrence of tumors in domestic animals. Data from 12 United States and Canadian colleges of veterinary medicine. J Natl Cancer Inst 1971; 47: :1333-44) about malignancy rates in cows, horses, cats and dogs. From our analysis we found that equines and bovines, animals with less invasive placentation, have lower rates of metastatic cancer than felines and canines in skin and glandular epithelial cancers as well as connective tissue sarcomas. We conclude that a link between type of placentation and species-specific malignancy rates is more likely related to derived mechanisms that suppress invasion rather than different degrees of fetal placental aggressiveness.
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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.