Oct 2, 2020
This podcast brings cutting edge
theory to standard, everyday cancer treatment, calling for a new
approach. Professor and author James Shapiro is speaking about evolution and cancer
at the Cancer & Evolution Symposium
in October.
Lucky listeners get a preview of his revolutionary ideas in this
podcast where he connects lessons from cancer biology to
evolutionary biology. He applies those ideas to a push for
better cancer therapy treatment through an effective combination of
big idea shifts with specific examples.
Listeners will finish this enlightening podcast with a better
understanding of
James Shapiro is a professor of
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago and
author of Evolution: A View from the 21st
Century.
Cancer is an evolutionary disease, he says. Think about it:
each stage follows evolutionary steps, from a benign cancer cell,
to a malignant cancer cell, then a metastasizing cell, and
eventually to cellular diversification and resistance to all kinds
of agents. This tremendous ability to diversify so rapidly caught
his attention and it seemed worthy to look at what cancer's ability
for rapid change implied about evolution.
He then sets the stage for listeners by describing the connection
between cell damage and "insults" to the beginnings of cancer. He
discusses the role of events like chromothripsis (chromosome
shattering) and polyploidy in cancer development and connects them
with earth-shattering events like asteroid collusions that resulted
in mass extinctions. These events on earth were followed by rapid
evolution and new organism development. Similarly, cancer leaps
ahead into tremendous heterogeneity and diversification as it
progresses.
He then makes these ideas
applicable: cancer treatment needs to stop this rapid evolution
capability. This is the main goal of the symposium—to address
cancer in a different way because it adapts and rapidly evolves as
it reacts to present treatments. He gives examples of how some
oncologists are attempting this already, using "adaptive" therapy
where they tone chemotherapy down to try to avoid triggering the
evolution. He also emphasizes that cancer can help evolutionary
biologists better understand evolution.
Cancer, he says, is a demonstration of the inherent potential
for evolutionary change; furthermore, it can show evolutionary
biologists that organisms have the ability to change themselves and
increasingly so. Cancer shows us how much potential and
capability exists in cells to change their heredity and acquire new
characteristics. Listen in for more of this rapid evolutionary
change happening in cancer and evolutionary biology
disciplines.
For more about the symposium,
see cancerevolution.org.
Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK