ArticleEvolution, medicine, and public health2024
A new perspective on tumor progression: Evolution via selection for function.
Article in Evolution, medicine, and public health, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- When effective anticancer therapies are, in fact, destabilizing the tumor's Group Phenotypic Composition.NPJ precision oncology · 2026Review
- Who's afraid of synthetic data? Hybrid approaches to deliver medical digital twins.Informatics in medicine unlocked · 2026Article
- Selection for Function in Complex Distributed Pathological Systems.Evolutionary applications · 2026Article
- Exploring tumorigenesis as a process of phenotypic state-space exploration and selective funneling.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2026Article
- The early-onset cancer epidemics: evidence synthesis using the prospective cohort incident-tumor biobank method.European journal of epidemiology · 2025Review
- Review
- Death-ision: the link between cellular resilience and cancer resistance to treatments.Molecular cancer · 2025Review
- Leveraging selection for function in tumor evolution: System-level cancer therapies.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2025Article
- Survival of quick problem solver!Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2024Article
- Towards a new therapeutic approach based on selection for function in tumors: response to Dr. Mesut Tez.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Tumorigenesis is commonly attributed to Darwinian processes involving natural selection among cells and groups of cells. However, progressing tumors are those that also achieve an appropriate group phenotypic composition (GPC). Yet, the selective processes acting on tumor GPCs are distinct from that associated with classical Darwinian evolution (i.e. natural selection based on differential reproductive success) as tumors are not genuine evolutionary individuals and do not exhibit heritable variation in fitness. This complex evolutionary scenario is analogous to the recently proposed concept of 'selection for function' invoked for the evolution of both living and non-living systems. Therefore, we argue that it is inaccurate to assert that Darwinian processes alone account for all the aspects characterizing tumorigenesis and cancer progression; rather, by producing the genetic and phenotypic diversity required for creating novel GPCs, these processes fuel the evolutionary success of tumors that is dependent on selection for function at the tumor level.
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