ReviewMedical oncology (Northwood, London, England)2020
The issues with tissues: the wide range of cell fate separation enables the evolution of multicellularity and cancer.
Review in Medical oncology (Northwood, London, England), 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 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
10 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- Cancer, collapse, and the politics of somatic evolution.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2026Review
- Vertical Cancer Transmission via Asexual Fragmentation and Associated Cancer Prevalence.Evolutionary applications · 2025Article
- On the evolutionary developmental biology of the cell.Trends in genetics : TIG · 2024Review
- Origins of cancer: ain't it just mature cells misbehaving?The EMBO journal · 2024Review
- Integrating frontiers: a holistic, quantum and evolutionary approach to conquering cancer through systems biology and multidisciplinary synergy.Frontiers in oncology · 2024Review
- Review
- Modeling cancer's ecological and evolutionary dynamics.Medical oncology (Northwood, London, England) · 2023Article
- Mutation or not, what directly establishes a neoplastic state, namely cellular immortality and autonomy, still remains unknown and should be prioritized in our research.Journal of Cancer · 2022Review
- Cancer recurrence and lethality are enabled by enhanced survival and reversible cell cycle arrest of polyaneuploid cells.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Defeating lethal cancer: Interrupting the ecologic and evolutionary basis of death from malignancy.CA: a cancer journal for cliniciansReview
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Our understanding of the rises of animal and cancer multicellularity face the same conceptual hurdles: what makes the clade originate and what makes it diversify. Between the events of origination and diversification lies complex tissue organization that gave rise to novel functionality for organisms and, unfortunately, for malignant transformation in cells. Tissue specialization with distinctly separated cell fates allowed novel functionality at organism level, such as for vertebrate animals, but also involved trade-offs at the cellular level that are potentially disruptive. These trade-offs are under-appreciated and here we discuss how the wide separation of cell phenotypes may contribute to cancer evolution by (a) how factors can reverse differentiated cells into a window of phenotypic plasticity, (b) the reversal to phenotypic plasticity coupled with asexual reproduction occurs in a way that the host cannot adapt, and (c) the power of the transformation factor correlates to the power needed to reverse tissue specialization. The role of reversed cell fate separation for cancer evolution is strengthened by how some tissues and organisms maintain high cell proliferation and plasticity without developing tumours at a corresponding rate. This demonstrates a potential proliferation paradox that requires further explanation. These insights from the cancer field, which observes tissue evolution in real time and closer than any other field, allow inferences to be made on evolutionary events in animal history. If a sweet spot of phenotypic and reproductive versatility is key to transformation, factors stimulating cell fate separation may have promoted also animal diversification on Earth.
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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.