The making of a monster

• Autores: Michael Slezak
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 2953, 2014, págs. 8-9
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • When a cancer evolves the ability to metastasise, or invade multiple tissues in the body, it has to pull off several remarkable feats: wrench itself from the primary tumor; thrive independently; burst through the wall of a blood or lymphatic vessel; outwit the immune system; and, finally, anchor and grow in a new location. Once it figures out how to do all this and can spread around the body, a person is unlikely to survive more than a few months. Now Charles Swanton from Cancer Research UK and his team at University College London think they understand what happens. Rather than gradually collecting many tiny mutations, cancer dramatically reorders its genome, evolving these abilities in large leaps or "macromutations". This allows it to conjure up the suite of traits it needs to turn into a killer.