Фрагмент книги «Cancer. Myths, Realities, and a Blueprint for Living»
energy metabolism disorders (Chapter 5)
chronic inflammation (Chapter 6)
invasion and metastasis (Chapter 6)
increased vascular growth (Chapter 6)
immune control avoidance (Chapter 7).
Some (and perhaps even most) of the items on this list may initially seem like inarticulate scientific jargon, but we will address each of them in this book.
Figure 1. Not only do cancerous tumors differ from healthy tissues, but they are also very diverse among themselves. Within that diversity, however, they all share common key features that allow us to combine them into one disease group.
Why is it that cancer gets so much attention from researchers, whether they are physicians or biologists who study the most basic science, rather than focusing instead on scientific applications? When we observe the distortions inherent to malignant cells, scientists are better able to understand the molecular mechanisms in life’s normal, healthy manifestations.
An early novel by brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Noon: 22nd Century, describes a humorous experiment by computer programmers working on a powerful supercomputer capable of creating material models of objects being studied. After teaching the computer to provide a normal description of a sheep, the mischievous scientists feed it an image of a five-legged animal with no cerebellum, and the poor computer begins to spit out monstrosities, trying to solve an un-solvable problem. When the cause of the anomaly is revealed, the programmers’ colleagues first wanted to beat them in retaliation. However, the team then realizes that, thanks to the prank, their research group now has access to the largest collection of data on machine errors and is delighted with the new material for research and analysis.
If we look at cancer cells from the perspective of enthusiastic scientific curiosity, rather than superstition and horror, they are essentially the same five-legged anomalies, the victims of multiple errors — whether genetic, signaling, or metabolic in nature. However, by looking into this “warped mirror,” we have a better understanding of life as it should be. Thanks to experiments on cancer cells, we have made numerous scientific discoveries, which I would like to describe in this book. You will see “Nobel Prize” mentioned at least ten times throughout the book, and not because I enthusiastically follow this prestigious scientific award, but because whether directly or indirectly, a significant portion of the past century’s fundamental discoveries in medicine and biology have come from oncology research. As of the writing of this book, the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is the most recent example and was awarded for novel cancer immunotherapies based on immune response “checkpoints.” Just as it was awarded, I was, in fact, making my final edits on that very chapter. There are many strange coincidences in life…
