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  • Review Article
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What does physics have to do with cancer?

Nature Reviews Cancer volume 11, pages 657–670 (2011)Cite this article

Subjects

Key Points

  • Approaches from the physical sciences can contribute to the rate at which powerful new diagnostic tools and therapies can be discovered and brought into the clinic. We provide examples from four areas to describe how teams of physical scientists, cancer biologists, clinicians and cancer advocates are tackling cancer from the perspective of the physical sciences.

  • The principles of evolutionary biology can be used to study the mechanisms and dynamics of tumour initiation, tumour progression, the response to treatment and the emergence of resistance. For example, large-scale cross-sectional genomic data sets can be combined with novel evolutionary approaches to predict the temporal order of somatic events that arise during tumorigenesis. Such knowledge helps to guide the generation of the correct genomic context in animal models of human cancer and helps to prioritize the validation of potential drug targets.

  • DNA in vivo is often sharply distorted away from the canonical Watson–Crick structure; different DNA sequences vary greatly in the ease with which such sharp distortions can be accommodated. Most of the eukaryotic genomic DNA is bent around histones to form nucleosomes. The capacity of the DNA sequence to undergo such distortion can influence the specific preferred locations for many of the nucleosomes.

  • The existence of a cancerous lesion can sometimes be detected through the analysis of the altered behaviour of cells that are located substantial distances away from the primary lesion, a phenomenon that is known as the 'field effect'. Partial wave spectroscopy takes advantage of the field effect to allow for the sensitive and specific detection of cancers in tissues that are difficult to reach.

  • Cancer is an extraordinarily complex disease. Methods that are commonly used in physics can reduce the complexity of cancer to a manageable set of underlying principles and phenomena. In particular, Transport OncoPhysics views cancer as a disease of multiscale mass transport deregulation involving the biological barriers that separate different body compartments. Probes that can be used to investigate the mass transport properties of tissues can be used as directed vectors for the localized, preferential release of therapeutics into tumours.

Abstract

Large-scale cancer genomics, proteomics and RNA-sequencing efforts are currently mapping in fine detail the genetic and biochemical alterations that occur in cancer. However, it is becoming clear that it is difficult to integrate and interpret these data and to translate them into treatments. This difficulty is compounded by the recognition that cancer cells evolve, and that initiation, progression and metastasis are influenced by a wide variety of factors. To help tackle this challenge, the US National Cancer Institute Physical Sciences-Oncology Centers initiative is bringing together physicists, cancer biologists, chemists, mathematicians and engineers. How are we beginning to address cancer from the perspective of the physical sciences?

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Figure 1: Similarities among soap bubbles, cells in the Drosophila eye and loss of tissue organization in cancer.
Figure 2: Tissues are complex dynamic systems that feature multiscale mechanochemical coupling.
Figure 3: Physical sciences shed light onto nucleosome and transcription factor competition and chromosome packaging.
Figure 4: The application of physical science approaches for understanding deregulated transport in cancer.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge support from the US National Cancer Institute Physical Sciences-Oncology Center (PSOC) initiative to fund the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute PSOC (F.M.), Bay Area PSOC (J.L.), The Methodist Hospital Research Institute PSOC (M.F.) and the Northwestern University PSOC (J.W.). M.F.'s research for this article was furthermore supported by grants from DoD/BCRP (W81XWH-09-1-0212), as well as by the Ernest Cockrell Jr. Distinguished Endowed Chair. The authors would like to thank A. Sebeson for her invaluable help. This work is dedicated to Professor Jonathan Widom. With his passing, we have lost both a major intellectual force and a valued member of our community, as well as a trusted friend and colleague.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology, and Department of Biostatistics, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, 02115, Massachusetts, USA

    Franziska Michor

  2. Department of Physics and Division of Cell and Developmental Biology, University of California, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    Jan Liphardt

  3. The Methodist Hospital Research Institute, Houston, 77030, Texas, USA

    Mauro Ferrari

  4. Department of Molecular Biosciences and Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, 60208, Illinois, USA

    Jonathan Widom

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  1. Franziska Michor
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Correspondence to Franziska Michor.

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Michor, F., Liphardt, J., Ferrari, M. et al. What does physics have to do with cancer?. Nat Rev Cancer 11, 657–670 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc3092

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