Cancer evolution

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Background

Cancer is a group of diseases associated with abnormal cell growth driven by a process of clonal expansion. These process events involving cells progressing from normal to pre-cancerous to cancerous state represent a form of Darwinian evolution. The relevance of this evolutionary framework, where genetic variation acts as an evolutionary substrate, has been increasingly recognised over the past decade. Genomic instability fosters genetic diversity and leads to tumour heterogeneity, a major cause of therapeutic resistance. Under selective pressure exerted by a therapeutic treatment, resistance can emerge as a consequence of the expansion of pre-existing subclonal populations or from the evolution of drug-tolerant cells. Nowadays, sequencing technologies coupled with bioinformatics advancements have shown an extensive genomic heterogeneity within cancers and given insight on the evolutionary dynamics of tumour growth.

Despite considerable progress in cancer biology and medicine our understanding of somatic aberrations that occur in cancers and clonal progression remains still unexplored especially for those fewer common cancers. Somatic variation is a result of genomic instability, which includes endogenous and exogenous processes generating point mutations, as well as chromosomal instability and tumour heterogeneity. Drug resistance, metastatic progression, and poor survival also depends on cancer heterogeneity and clonal evolution. A deep understanding of tumour evolution is a key as it will improve our understanding of tumour progression and will assist the development of novel therapies and thus improve outcomes for patients.

Goals and problem to tackle:

● Understanding tumour development, progression and resistance from a basic and evolutionary perspective.

● Functional studies (animal and/or organoids) and mathematical models developed to understand human cancer progression, metastasis and therapeutic resistance

● Understanding cancer, one cell at a time: single cells studies to understand tumour ecosystem, resolve tumour heterogeneity, and reconstruct the evolutionary trajectories of cancer cells and identify rare subclones.

● Detection of circulating tumour DNA for detecting and diagnosing a tumor and guiding tumour-specific treatment.

● Cancer of life: developing a knowledge of not human cancer as a proxy for understanding human cancer

We accept manuscripts covering the following areas:

● Applied, and methodological studies for a better understanding of mechanisms underlying somatic evolution in cancer

● Evolutionary models for cancer initiation, progress, metastasis, and drug resistance

● Studies translating somatic evolution knowledge into medicine.

● New sequencing methodologies and bioinformatic tools to tackle cancer evolution

● Studies that explore tumour heterogeneity and clonal evolution as a complex and multifactorial phenomenon, which integrates genetic, epigenetic, and environmental inputs

● Cancer progression in plants and animals (not humans)

● Darwinian evolution on cancer

● Genomics and Transcriptomics on single cells and evolutionary progression

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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