Cancer progression as a learning process

iScience

Omri Barak¹  Aseel Shomar²  Naama Brenner³ 

[1] Network Biology Research Laboratory, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel;Department of Chemical Engineering, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel;Rappaport Faculty of Medicine Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel;

关键词: Evolutionary theories;    Cancer systems biology;   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Summary: Drug 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.

【 授权许可】

Unknown