Despite decades of research, cancer remains an enigma.

Conventional wisdom holds that cancer is driven by random mutations that create aberrant cells that run amok in the body.

In a new paper published this week in the journal BioEssays, researchers from The Australian National University and Arizona State University challenge this model.

Instead, they argue cancer is a type of genetic throwback that progresses via a series of reversions to ancestral forms of life.

In contrast with the conventional model, the researchers say the distinctive capabilities of cancer cells are not primarily generated by mutations but are pre-existent and lie dormant in normal cells.

Associate Professors Charley Lineweaver and Anneke Blackburn at ANU teamed up with Arizona researchers Paul Davies and Kimberly Bussey to propose what they call the Serial Atavism Model (SAM) of cancer. This model suggests that cancer occurs through multiple steps that resurrect ancient cellular functions.

Such functions are retained by evolution for specific purposes such as embryo development and wound healing and are usually turned off in the adult form of complex organisms.

But these old genes can be turned back on often through damage to the systems that kept them turned off. It is the resulting resurrection steps, or atavistic reversions, that give cancer cells the ability to survive, proliferate, resist therapy and metastasize, the researchers say.

“In biology, nothing makes sense except in the light of evolution. And in the case of cancer, nothing makes sense except in the light of the deep evolutionary changes that occurred as we became multicellular organisms,” Associate Professor Lineweaver said.

Co-author, Associate Professor Blackburn said: “Appreciation of the importance of gene ages is growing among oncologists and cancer biologists.

“A better understanding of cancer will develop from considering alternative models like this. Now we need to use this insight to develop novel therapeutic strategies.”

You may also like

Article Card Image

Pain and cancer: what we know from world’s largest study to date 

A first-of-its-kind study looking at the levels of pain experienced by cancer survivors provides evidence on when pain is most likely to be experienced.

Article Card Image

Australian woman found with python parasite in her brain

Researchers from ANU and the Canberra Hospital make world-first detection of a roundworm common to snakes inside a human patient.

Article Card Image

Vaping: the health effects and harms

What do we know about the health impacts of vaping and how it is addicting a new generation? This is what the largest ever review of e-cigarettes tells us.

Subscribe to ANU Reporter

Anu Logo

+61 2 6125 5111

The Australian National University, Canberra

CRICOS Provider: 00120C

ABN: 52 234 063 906

EDX Logo
APRU Logo
IARU Logo
Group of eight Australia Logo