Classical Cancer Biology: Misconceptions and Limitations

Cancer is the co-evolution of cancer cells and their turbulent microenvironment, characterized by dynamical hyper-chaotic gene expression profiles. However, cancers should not be viewed as the result of random mutations and malfunctioning information processing systems. Rather, it is the selective advantages conferred by adaptive evolution of cellular biosystems. Although on a systemic scale, cancer is defined as a disease, on a cellular basis they outperform healthy (non-transformed cells) in terms of survival and reproductive success. Their enhanced longevity pathways, metastatic invasion, extended telomeres, dynamical morphogenesis, regenerative stem cell division and environment-specific metabolic cascades indicate they are adaptive evolutionary cell states that have surpassed the boundaries normal cells are confined to. Therefore, the paper presents a brief summary of currently existing classical cancer models in the field of mathematical biology and the misconceptions of cancer epimetabolomes to further advance cancer research beyond its current limits. Through an insight into the mathematical behaviors of cancer cells, a quantum adaptive epigenetic landscape is proposed to explain the selective evolutionary dominance of cancer cells.