I have not posted anything in this blog for quite some time. Attending workshops (I had one in Dresden today) and visiting collaborators (I am off to Lyon tomorrow) leave very little precious time for blogging. Which is not to say that nothing is happening, quite the opposite.
My trip tomorrow will allow me to meet Dr. Benjamin Ribba (Universite Claude Bernard) with whom I am investigating the role of the microenvironment in driving cancer evolution. We start from the hypothesis put forward by Hanahan and Weinberg 7 years ago that tumour cells have to acquire a number of capabilities if a group of rapidly and unorderly dividing cells is to become a cancer. The capabilities mentioned in their paper (Cell, 2000, Vol 100, 57-70) are: unlimited replicative potential, self sufficiency of growth signals, ignoring anti growth signals, angiogenesis,evasion of apoptosis and invasiveness. Now, from the evolutionary view point, what makes a cell with a particular phenotype (resulting from acquiring one or more of these capabilities) more or less successful is its capability to produce offspring and this capability will depend on how this phenotype adapts and modifies the microenvironment it inhabits. Different microenvironments are likely to lead to cancers that become aggressive using different different paths (of capability acquisition). It might even be the case that we could find out which microenvironments are more likely to lead to cancers in which this path takes longer or does not occur in a relevant amount of time (that is, the normal life span of a human being).
