James DeGregori

James DeGregori is an American cancer biologist, professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, known for the theory of adaptive oncogenesis.

Adaptive oncogenesis

The conventional view of cancer risk holds that the somatic mutation burden accumulated with age and over a lifetime is the dominant driver of cancer. DeGregori’s adaptive oncogenesis framework adds a selection-centered correction: whether an oncogenic mutation confers an advantage depends on the state of the tissue it arises in. In young, healthy tissue, most oncogenic mutations are maladaptive — cells carrying them compete poorly against fitter wild-type neighbors. Aging, and