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Cancer selection

Abstract

Cancers are often thought to be selectively neutral. This is because most of the individuals that they kill are post-reproductive. Some cancers, however, kill the young and so select for anticancer adaptations that reduce the chance of death. These adaptations could reduce the somatic mutation rate or the selective value of a mutant clone of cells, or increase the number of stages required for neoplasia. New theory predicts that cancer selection — selection to prevent or postpone deaths due to cancer — should be especially important as animals evolve new morphologies or larger, longer-lived bodies, and might account for some of the differences in the causes of cancer between mice and men.

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Figure 1: Hybrid fish with melanomas: the Gordon–Kosswig cross.
Figure 2: Number of tumour-suppressor loci required to keep the frequency of juvenile/pre-reproductive cancer below 10−4, as a function of the number of cells in the tissue or organism.

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Acknowledgements

We thank C. Isacke and M. Schartl for commenting on drafts of the manuscript. We also thank A. Ashworth, J. Barnes, F. Pompei, M. Schartl and W. Weber for answering queries and providing the figures. Our research was supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (UK), Natural Environmental Research Council (UK), the Wellcome Trust and the Daphne Jackson Trust (UK).

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Correspondence to Armand M. Leroi.

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DATABASES

LocusLink

Brca1

BRCA1

Cdkn1b

EGFR

ERBB2

IGF1

INK4A

MYC

Nf1

NF1

p107

p53

p63

p73

Pml

Pten

PTEN

Rb

RB

RET

Trp53

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Leroi, A., Koufopanou, V. & Burt, A. Cancer selection. Nat Rev Cancer 3, 226–231 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc1016

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