Recent genetic analyzes seem to confirm a simple and radical theory on this disease. No, cancer would not be linked to random genetic mutations. It would be the reactivation of an archaic life, that of our unicellular past, still inscribed at the bottom of our genome.
Hervé Poirier, editor-in-chief of the scientific magazine Epsiloon, today evokes a new theory on cancer, a fascinating hypothesis, which could make therapies evolve. Because better understanding this disease promises to better fight it.
franceinfo: This new theory upsets our view of this disease, what is it in concrete terms?
Herve Poirier: A few months ago, Chinese biologists made a strange observation: they found that in tumors, genes associated with single-cell life are more expressed. These are genes bequeathed by our distant ancestors, made up of a single cell, more than a billion years ago, before the appearance of beings made up of trillions of cells, like you and me.
Yet this lends weight to a simple, startling and radical theory of cancer formulated by two physicists 15 years ago. The idea: cancer would be the reactivation of this unicellular past, still inscribed at the bottom of our genome, but repressed by younger genes, which appeared with multicellular life. Cancer cells would be renegades: they would break this established pact, proliferating on their own, becoming a formidable enemy within.
Surprising: so far we have taken this disease completely on the wrong track?
The dominant idea, for a long time, is that cancer is linked to random genetic mutations, following stress (eg radiation). But how to explain that these random mutations always give the same forms of cancer? How to explain the cases of spontaneous regressions?
The new theory makes it much easier to answer. It also explains why cancer is present in all animals, even in plants. And why cancer cells tend to multiply, to mutate in the face of attacks, to produce energy without oxygen: in short, to react like single cells! Still, despite all these arguments, the theory remains very much in the minority. Oncologists are actually more interested in concrete solutions than theoretical debates.
And, precisely, does this new theory open up new therapeutic perspectives?
Yes. Seeing cancer as the return of an archaic repressed dynamic invites us, for example, to take inspiration from parasite eradication strategies, or to requisition the natural enemies of unicellular cells (viruses, bacteria, etc.), or to modify the environment of tumours, for example by increasing the oxygen inside tumours.
The therapies still have a lot of progress to make in terms of survival, side effects or resistance to treatment. What if to better treat cancer, we had to start by understanding it better?
>>> To read
The Latest Version of Atavism Theory by Charles Lineweaver and Paul Davies
The recent publication of Chinese biologists