ArticlePLoS biology2018
Is adaptive therapy natural?
Article in PLoS biology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- Beyond Darwin: reactive heredity, burst-drift dynamics and eco‑evolutionary control of cancer.Molecular cancer · 2026Review
- Adaptive Therapy Exploits Fitness Deficits in Chemotherapy-Resistant Ovarian Cancer to Achieve Long-Term Tumor Control.Cancer research · 2025Article
- Article
- Targeting myeloid-derived suppressor cells in combination with tumor cell vaccination predicts anti-tumor immunity and breast cancer dormancy: an in silico experiment.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Interdisciplinary approaches to metastasis.iScience · 2022Article
- Identifying key questions in the ecology and evolution of cancer.Evolutionary applications · 2021Article
- Adaptive Therapy for Metastatic Melanoma: Predictions from Patient Calibrated Mathematical Models.Cancers · 2021Article
- Searching for Goldilocks: How Evolution and Ecology Can Help Uncover More Effective Patient-Specific Chemotherapies.Cancer research · 2020Review
- Review
- Exploiting evolutionary trade-offs for posttreatment management of drug-resistant populations.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- The evolution of resistance and tolerance as cancer defences.Parasitology · 2020Article
- Optimal control to reach eco-evolutionary stability in metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer.PloS one · 2020Article
- Can postfertile life stages evolve as an anticancer mechanism?PLoS biology · 2019Article
- Modeling genetic heterogeneity of drug response and resistance in cancer.Current opinion in systems biology · 2019Article
- Hepatocellular carcinomas: evolution to sorafenib resistance through hepatic leukaemia factor.Gut · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
12 authors at 6 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Research suggests that progression-free survival can be prolonged by integrating evolutionary principles into clinical cancer treatment protocols. The goal is to prevent or slow the proliferation of resistant malignant cell populations. The logic behind this therapy relies on ecological and evolutionary processes. These same processes would be available to natural selection in decreasing the probability of an organism's death due to cancer. We propose that organisms' anticancer adaptions include not only ones for preventing cancer but also ones for directing and retarding the evolution of life-threatening cancer cells. We term this last strategy natural adaptive therapy (NAT). The body's NAT might include a lower than otherwise possible immune response. A restrained immune response might forego maximum short-term kill rates. Restraint would forestall immune-resistant cancer cells and produce long-term durable control of the cancer population. Here, we define, develop, and explore the possibility of NAT. The discovery of NAT mechanisms could identify new strategies in tumor prevention and treatments. Furthermore, we discuss the potential risks of immunotherapies that force the immune system to ramp up the short-term kill rates of malignant cancer cells in a manner that undermines the body's NAT and accelerates the evolution of immune resistance.
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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.