An Update on the Multi-Stage Model for Carcinogenesis

The multistage model for carcinogenesis was first proposed by Armitage and Doll in 1954. There were two supporting pillars that supported the proposition. The first was that changes could be observed in normal cells on the pathway to becoming cancerous. The second support for the theory was the rate of occurrence of individual cancers as a function of age. For many cancers this was observed to be a power law with integer power, but with the integer different for different cancers. The multistage model could easily be used to explain this phenomenon.

There is a very important modification of the multistage theory that we are working with. We will report on this modification, on its significance in understanding carcinogenesis, and on its potential in treating cancer in a quite different way using the modified model.

The paper below is a useful account of background material published by myself and my student Joshua Hiller in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2016.11.002

The talk should be accessible to interested graduate students and faculty.