J Appl Biomed 22:123-128, 2024 | DOI: 10.32725/jab.2024.016

Today's cancer research and treatment - highly sophisticated and molecularly targeted, yet firmly bolstered in the classical theories

Thomas W. Grunt
Medical University of Vienna, Comprehensive Cancer Center (CCC), Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Hematology & Oncology, Department of Medicine I, Vienna, Austria

Cancer research is linked to modern life-sciences, encompassing achievements in virology, yeast-biology, molecular-biology, genetics, systems-biology, bioinformatics, and so on. With these fascinating developments, it's easy to overlook that the fundamental theories and treatment strategies were established in the early 20th century and have remained valid ever since. Therefore, tribute must be paid to the founders of the field. The main hypotheses on carcinogenesis, the genetic model and the metabolic model, and the concept of cancer-treatment with cytotoxic, targeted or metabolic drugs were proposed more than 100 years ago by great minds such as T. Boveri, O. Warburg, and P. Ehrlich. Hence nothing about these cancer concepts is really new. Through development of powerful new technologies, we have been able to decipher the mechanisms of malignant transformation, thus significantly advancing the field. Our own studies have been focused on the cross-talk between cell-growth-signaling and lipid-metabolism in ovarian cancer to find crossover-points for co-targeting in order to achieve synergistic treatment effects. Notably, a side-effect of the application of current methods of molecular-cell-biology is a deeper knowledge of the laws of normal cell-biology and cell-life. Thus we anticipate the field will advance rapidly in the near future.

Keywords: Chemotherapy; Genetics; Metabolism; Molecular targeting; Oncogene; Tumor suppressor gene
Conflicts of interest:

The author declares that he has no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have influenced the work reported in this paper.

Received: March 31, 2024; Revised: July 9, 2024; Accepted: August 22, 2024; Prepublished online: September 2, 2024; Published: September 26, 2024  Show citation

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Grunt TW. Today's cancer research and treatment - highly sophisticated and molecularly targeted, yet firmly bolstered in the classical theories. J Appl Biomed. 2024;22(3):123-128. doi: 10.32725/jab.2024.016. PubMed PMID: 39434508.
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