ReviewCold Spring Harbor perspectives in medicine2017
Natural Selection in Cancer Biology: From Molecular Snowflakes to Trait Hallmarks.
Review in Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in medicine, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 papers.
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Who cites it
42 citing papers in PubMed.
- Detecting Positive Selection by Modeling Structure Within Images of Genetic Variation.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- A Systematic Review of Evidence for the Cost of Therapeutic Resistance in Cancer.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Pulsed electromagnetic field stimulation subtly modulates doxorubicin sensitivity in a spheroid co-culture model of osteosarcoma.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Epitranscriptomic sculpting: the role of mMedical oncology (Northwood, London, England) · 2025Review
- Evolutionary measures show that recurrence of DCIS is distinct from progression to breast cancer.Breast cancer research : BCR · 2025Article
- Resistance Management for Cancer: Lessons from Farmers.Cancer research · 2024Review
- The evolutionary theory of cancer: challenges and potential solutions.Nature reviews. Cancer · 2024Review
- Evolutionary Measures Show that Recurrence of DCIS is Distinct from Progression to Breast Cancer.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- Strength of selection in lung tumors correlates with clinical features better than tumor mutation burden.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Lung adenocarcinomas without driver genes converge to common adaptive strategies through diverse genetic, epigenetic, and niche construction evolutionary pathways.Medical oncology (Northwood, London, England) · 2024Article
- Onco-Breastomics: An Eco-Evo-Devo Holistic Approach.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Oncogenic context shapes the fitness landscape of tumor suppression.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Reuniting philosophy and science to advance cancer research.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2023Article
- Computational Biology Helps Understand How Polyploid Giant Cancer Cells Drive Tumor Success.Genes · 2023Review
- Systemic interindividual epigenetic variation in humans is associated with transposable elements and under strong genetic control.Genome biology · 2023Article
- Editorial: Cancer evolution.Frontiers in genetics · 2023Article
- Cellular Plasticity and Heterotypic Interactions during Breast Morphogenesis and Cancer Initiation.Cancers · 2022Review
- Review
- UPP1 Promotes Lung Adenocarcinoma Progression through Epigenetic Regulation of Glycolysis.Aging and disease · 2022Article
- High Accuracy Indicators of Androgen Suppression Therapy Failure for Prostate Cancer-A Modeling Study.Cancers · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Evolution by natural selection is the conceptual foundation for nearly every branch of biology and increasingly also for biomedicine and medical research. In cancer biology, evolution explains how populations of cells in tumors change over time. It is a fundamental question whether this evolutionary process is driven primarily by natural selection and adaptation or by other evolutionary processes such as founder effects and drift. In cancer biology, as in organismal evolutionary biology, there is controversy about this question and also about the use of adaptation through natural selection as a guiding framework for research. In this review, we discuss the differences and similarities between evolution among somatic cells versus evolution among organisms. We review what is known about the parameters and rate of evolution in neoplasms, as well as evidence for adaptation. We conclude that adaptation is a useful framework that accurately explains the defining characteristics of cancer. Further, convergent evolution through natural selection provides the only satisfying explanation both for how a group of diverse pathologies have enough in common to usefully share the descriptive label of "cancer" and for why this convergent condition becomes life-threatening.
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