[대학원 생명과학과 세미나 안내]
연사 : 김인산 박사(KIST 의과학연구소)
연제 : Complex adaptive therapeutic strategy for cancer control
일시 : 2017년 9월 29일 (금) 오후 5시
장소 : 하나과학관 A동 B131호
초청교수 : 고영규 교수
Abstract
The more we study the major issues of tumors, the more we come to realize that they cannot be understood in isolation. Tumors are systemic problems, which mean that they are interconnected and interdependent. We cannot deny that we have made significant successful progress in understanding and treating tumors. Despite all the progress made, the development and progression of cancer remains largely a mystery. Cancers develop resistance to drugs, recur after a while and eventually end up with killing their host. "Cancer is no more of a disease of cells than a traffic jam is a disease of cars. A lifetime of study of the internal combustion engine would not help anyone to understand our traffic problems. The causes of congestion can be many. A traffic jam is due to failure of the normal relationship between driven cars and their environment and can occur whether they themselves are running normally or not." By D.W. Smithers, Lancet, March 1962. Cancer cells are present within a complex adaptive ecosystem consisted of associated cells including immune cells, connective tissue cells, endothelial cells within a scaffold of matrix altogether forming tumor microenvironment. Cancer, perhaps uniquely among human illnesses, is a disease that arises through Darwinian interactions of microenvironmental selection and phenotypic adaptation, which are both causes and consequences of its complexity and heterogeneity. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts so that linear and reductionistic approach against tumors as a complex adaptive system is inevitably ineffective. We need to develop a complex adaptive therapeutic strategy for the control of tumors. Here, I suggest some principles and examples of stepwise strategy for cancer control.