Over 500 billion cells in our bodies will be replaced daily, yet natural selection has enabled us to develop defenses against the cellular mutations which could cause cancer. It is this relationship between evolution and the body's fight against cancer which is explored in a new special issue of the Open Access journal Evolutionary Applications.
"Cancer is far from a single well-defined disease which we can identify and eradicate," said Dr Athena Aktipis, Director, Human and Social Evolution, Center for Evolution and Cancer at the University of California, San Francisco. "It is highly diverse and evolutionary theory allows us to consider cancer as a highly complex and evolving ecosystem. This approach can improve the understanding, treatment and prevention of a number of different cancer types."
Read more at Medical Xpress
See special issue from the journal of Evolutionary Applications.
