Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News & Views
  • Published:

Aneuploidy and cancer—the vintage wine revisited

Nature Biotechnology volume 19, pages 22–23 (2001)Cite this article

Twenty-five years ago, Peter Duesberg isolated and characterized the first viral oncogene—the principal base on which the predominant, current gene mutation theory of cancer rests. During the past five years, Duesberg has been applying a similar determination investigating an alternative genetic explanation of cancer that derives from a century-old observation concerning the chromosomal abnormalities (aneuploidies) associated with essentially every solid human tumor1. Now in a paper published in the most recent issue of PNAS2, he and his co-workers have provided compelling evidence that the high mutation rates of cancer cells are due to an aneuploidy-based continuous chromosome reassortment.

In a series of papers between 1997 and 2000, Duesberg and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Heidelberg at Mannheim showed that aneuploidy, an imbalance in chromosome number, is diagnostic in the earliest stages of cell culture of malignant transformation induced by non-genotoxic carcinogens, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)3; that aneuploidy perfectly explains the notorious genetic instability of cancer cells4; and that aneuploidy is a transformation-related event, because it precedes malignant transformation, and because 14 out of 14 cancers (100%) of inbred Chinese hamsters (CH) were aneuploid compared with about 30% of PHA-treated CH cells5. (The chance that aneuploidy of the 14 cancers was unrelated to transformation is only 0.3014, or ∼5 × 10−8.) In addition to these experimental supports, the aneuploidy explanation of cancer was given a rigorous formalization based on the mathematical and logical underpinnings of metabolic control analysis6, until relatively recently an arcane biochemical discipline that has nonetheless replaced the textbook concept of a rate-limiting enzyme with the real-world idea of distributed control7.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

  1. Bialy, H. Nat. Biotechnol. 16, 137–138 (1998).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Duesberg, P.H., Stindl, R. & Hehlmann, R. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 97, 14295–14300 (2000).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Li, R. et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 94, 14506– 14511 (1997).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Duesberg, P., Rausch, C., Rasnick, D. & Hehlmann, R. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 95, 13692–13697 (1997).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Duesberg, P. et al. Cancer Genet. Cytogenet. 119, 83– 93 (2000).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Rasnick, D. & Duesberg, P.H. Biochem. J. 340, 621–630 (1998).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Fell, D. Understanding the control of metabolism. (Portland Press, London; 1997).

    Google Scholar 

  8. Harris, H. The cells of the body; a history of somatic cell genetics. (Cold Spring Harbor Press, Cold Spring Harbor, NY; 1995).

    Google Scholar 

  9. Duesberg, P.H. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 59, 930– 937 (1968).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Schoenlein, P.V. Cytotechnology 12, 63–89 (1993).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. resident scholar at the Institute of Biotechnology, National Autonomous University of Mexico (IBT/UNAM), Cuernavaca, Mexico

    Harvey Bialy

Authors
  1. Harvey Bialy
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Bialy, H. Aneuploidy and cancer—the vintage wine revisited. Nat Biotechnol 19, 22–23 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/83463

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/83463

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing