文章基本信息

标题：Cancer progression as a learning process
本地全文：下载
作者：Aseel Shomar ; Omri Barak ; Naama Brenner 等
期刊名称：iScience
印刷版ISSN：2589-0042
出版年度：2022
卷号：25
期号：3
页码：1-13
DOI：10.1016/j.isci.2022.103924
语种：English
出版社：Elsevier
摘要：SummaryDrug resistance and metastasis—the major complications in cancer—both entail adaptation of cancer cells to stress, whether a drug or a lethal new environment. Intriguingly, these adaptive processes share similar features that cannot be explained by a pure Darwinian scheme, including dormancy, increased heterogeneity, and stress-induced plasticity. Here, we propose that learning theory offers a framework to explain these features and may shed light on these two intricate processes. In this framework, learning is performed at the single-cell level, by stress-driven exploratory trial-and-error. Such a process is not contingent on pre-existing pathways but on a random search for a state that diminishes the stress. We review underlying mechanisms that may support this search, and show by using a learning model that such exploratory learning is feasible in a high-dimensional system as the cell. At the population level, we view the tissue as a network of exploring agents that communicate, restraining cancer formation in health. In this view, disease results from the breakdown of homeostasis between cellular exploratory drive and tissue homeostasis.Graphical abstractDisplay OmittedEvolutionary theories; Cancer systems biology