Cancer redefined … altered cellular metabolism, transformed tissue
environment, dynamic, reactive, and reversible!

“Virtually every process in a cell is carried out by macromolecular
complexes whose actions need to be perfectly orchestrated.”
Dynamic interactions of proteins in complex networks: a more structured view Amelie Stein, et al., Institute for Research in Biomedicine, Barcelona, The FEBS Journal, 2009

“Epigenetic changes are potentially reversible, … are highly responsive
to environmental influences (at the cell-level microenvironment).”
“Wounds that will not heal,” J Byun, K Garchner, 2013

Research discoveries in recent years have revealed that we must
reconsider how we approach cancer and chronic disease. For
example, genetic research has demonstrated that cancer and its
biology is quite different than current accepted understanding. By
looking at cancer at the cell level, the tissue microenvironment, we
can see that cancer should not be defined by its “hallmarks”
(proliferation, invasion, DNA mutation, etc.). This perspective tended
to present cancer as an “invader” to the body which needed to be eradicated.

In normal human physiology, the body compensates for disruptions. These disruptions, such as changes in temperature, physical activity, nutritional intake, injury, infection or disease, cause the body to respond and attempt to normalize function. If the body fails to normalize or compensate for the disruption, a more permanent state of injury and response occurs. We have come to define this process of continuing or unresolved injury response as “chronic disease.” We now have the capacity to examine chronic disease at its most basic level, its origin, the
disease microenvironment.

Chronic disease at the cell level is characterized by cells that are experiencing stress. The stress, real or perceived, can be from of a variety of types or sources. Each cell senses the stress factors and attempts to adapt in order to survive. In the process of each cell’s adaptation “signals” are emitted which are in turn, sensed by surrounding cells. When a sufficient number of cells are persistently experiencing stress and signaling becomes of a sufficient quantity, the signaling can reach throughout the body, become “systemic.”

Every cell, regardless of type, responds to stress in the same way.

When cell stress becomes persistent the cell makes a dramatic change. It modifies its own metabolism. Over time, if the cell does not recover and return to its normal metabolism, cell signaling is amplified with additional of new signaling to represent the elevated stress or damage. When a group of cells establish a more permanent condition of stress, the signaling becomes even more amplified to the point that some cells are injured. In chronic disease and cancer, rather than healing the injury, this altered disease microenvironment establishes characteristics and signaling that sustain and expand the disease state.

At the cell level, chronic diseases like cancers, possess the same characteristics, very similar physiology. Recent advances in disease research, disease behavior at the cell level, has opened the door to re-evaluate disease, to offer the opportunity to change the way we treat disease.

An “invader” that must be removed or killed? Cancer is actually a chronic inflammatory disease, “a wound that will not heal.”