The Cancer Cell and the Cell Cycle Clock

  1. M. Hatakeyama*,
  2. R.A. Herrera*,
  3. T. Makela*,
  4. S.F. Dowdy*,
  5. T. Jacks, and
  6. R.A. Weinberg*
  1. *Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Howard Hughes Medical Institute, MIT Center for Cancer Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142

This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.

Excerpt

Cancer is increasingly viewed as a cellular disease. We now perceive the macroscopic tumor as being little more than a large population of similar cells sharing a common set of genetic aberrations. Such thinking focuses attention on the single cancer cell and mechanisms responsible for its transformation from a normal to a malignant growth state. Indeed, in the eyes of some, the disease of cancer will be understood by describing the processes associated with cell transformation.

This reduction would seem to provide the means for unifying the field of cancer research within a single conceptual framework. The reality, however, is that our field remains highly fragmented. Contemporary research on the cancer cell operates using three distinct and quite unrelated conceptual paradigms. Each paradigm creates its own logical space, its own distinct way of thinking about the cancer cell.

Until the mid 1970s, cancer cell research focused largely on the biology...

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