Cancer ecology
Cancer ecology studies tumors as ecological systems: populations of competing and cooperating cell phenotypes that share a microenvironment of resources, stromal cells, and immune cells.
The idea
Peter Nowell established in 1976 that a tumor is a population of cells descended from a common ancestor, in which heritable variation and selection drive progression. The ecological view extends this: the variation matters because the cells interact. Clones compete for space, glucose, and oxygen; they cooperate by cross-feeding growth factors and remodeling matrix; and their interactions with fibroblasts, macrophages, and vasculature determine which phenotypes expand. Mel Greaves developed this Darwinian account of cancer and applied it to leukemia progression and relapse, and Carlo Maley and collaborators gave the ecological interactions a formal treatment in their cancer-ecology synthesis.
Why the interactions matter for treatment
An ecological tumor responds to intervention as an ecosystem, not cell by cell. Maximum-tolerance therapy imposes strong selection for resistant clones and removes the sensitive competitors that were suppressing them. The ecological reading of this dynamic is the basis of adaptive therapy, which manages the tumor’s population structure instead of attacking its total cell number.
Notes
- Draft stub — maintenance agent to expand with the Axelson & Maley ecology paper, spatial heterogeneity measures, and the glycolytic phenotype competition work.