Abstract 4805: Carcinogenesis by stem cell misplacement–a novel cancer theory and its implications

Proceedings: AACR Annual Meeting 2014; April 5-9, 2014; San Diego, CA For rather a long period of time, it has been widely accepted that cancer was caused by gene mutations which is termed somatic mutation theory (SMT). But now the SMT theory has met with increasing doubts, disbelieves, and been facing challenges from other alternative theories. I here from a pathological perspective, and with the evidences from molecular pathology, hisopathology, and epidemiology, show that the 80 year old paradigm of carcinogenesis process from atypia to in situ carcinoma to invasive cancer is wrong. Since 90% of the human cancers are epithelially derived “carcinomas”, the turnover of this paradigm naturally negates the SMT theory for SMT sits on this model. The invasive cancer grows out in the stroma de novo from misplaced stem cells rather than deriving from the transformed in situ carcinoma cells. Also, I will show evidences that cancer cells are not so-believed “apoptosis-resistant”, but rather “short-lived sick cells”. In fact, it is the increased cell death which makes the cancer cells proliferate ceaselessly to compensate for the cell loss, and move to new locations for better chance of survival. I design this novel cancer theory as SCMT, stem cell misplacement theory. This theory is backed by huge amount of solid evidences and will bring revolutionary conceptual changes to our understanding and treatment of cancer, e.g., in situ carcinomas are not genuine cancer biologically, thus should not be treated the same as cancer. Citation Format: Rui-An Wang. Carcinogenesis by stem cell misplacement–a novel cancer theory and its implications. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 4805. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-4805