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. 2021 Feb 7;13(4):660.
doi: 10.3390/cancers13040660.

Curing Cancer: Lessons from a Prototype

Shi-Ming Tu  1 , Louis L Pisters  2
Affiliations

Curing Cancer: Lessons from a Prototype

Shi-Ming Tu et al. Cancers (Basel). .

Abstract

Germ cell tumor of the testis (TGCT) is a remarkably curable solid tumor even when it is widely metastatic and patently heterogeneous. It provides invaluable clues about the origin and nature of metastasis and heterogeneity, cancer dormancy and late recurrence, drug sensitivity and resistance, tumor immunity, and spontaneous remission that would enable us to enhance the cure and improve the care of patients with other currently intractable solid tumors. After all, germ cells are primeval stem cells and TGCT are a perfect stem cell tumor for us to investigate a stem cell versus genetic origin of cancer. In many respects, TGCT is a prototype stem cell tumor that will enable us to elucidate the role of differentiation versus dedifferentiation in the evolution of a complex mixed tumor. It will help us decipher relevance of the genome versus the epi-genome in a progenitor cancer stem cell versus a progeny differentiated cancer cell. Importantly, clarification of a cellular context versus the genetic makeup in cancer has immense clinical implications. We postulate a unified theory of cancer derived from seminal TGCT research to improve personalized cancer care. Contrary to current norms and conventional wisdom, we propose that when it concerns a complex rather than simple cancer and a mixed rather than pure tumor (which is practically all solid tumors) multimodal therapy trumps targeted therapy and integrated medicine overrides precision medicine.

Keywords: cancer stem cell; personalized care; precision medicine; second malignancy; somatic transformation; targeted therapy; testicular cancer.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
“Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow,” photographed by J. C. Schaarwächler in 1891, reproduced with permission from the Wellcome Medical Museum, London, UK.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Leroy C. Stevens. Reproduced with permission from The Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor ME.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Subtypes of nonseminomatous mixed germ cell tumor of the testis. Courtesy of Cancer published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of American Cancer Society.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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