Towards an integrated view of the neoplastic phenomena in cancer research

Abstract

Cancer research has been at the forefront of biomedical activity in recent decades, and advances in molecular biology have provided a growing amount of information on the mechanisms involved in the etiopathogenesis of tumors. Nevertheless, despite these advances, the complexity of cancer is more evident, especially as different levels of phenomena are considered to explain the heterogeneity of the neoplastic process. A synthetic analysis of advances in cancer research illustrates these changes. In attempting to overcome the limits of epistemological reductionism, there is a move from a view of a genetic basis for cancer to a more comprehensive perspective aiming to integrate a large amount of information and to understand the neoplastic phenomenon at higher levels of biological complexity through a new interpretative framework.