The Universality of Cancer

Carson C. Chow; Yanjun Li; Vipul Periwal

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arXiv · 1506.00597

The Universality of Cancer

Carson C. Chow·Yanjun Li·Vipul Periwal

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Abstract

Cancer has been characterized as a constellation of hundreds of diseases differing in underlying mutations and depending on cellular environments. Carcinogenesis as a stochastic physical process has been studied for over sixty years, but there is no accepted standard model. We show that the hazard rates of all cancers are characterized by a simple dynamic stochastic process on a half-line, with a universal linear restoring force balancing a universal simple Brownian motion starting from a universal initial distribution. Only a critical radius defining the transition from normal to tumorigenic genomes distinguishes between different cancer types when time is measured in cell--cycle units. Reparametrizing to chronological time units introduces two additional parameters: the onset of cellular senescence with age and the time interval over which this cessation in replication takes place. This universality implies that there may exist a finite separation between normal cells and tumorigenic cells in all tissue types that may be a viable target for both early detection and preventive therapy.

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Carson C. Chow, Yanjun Li, Vipul Periwal. 2015-06-01. The Universality of Cancer. https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.00597

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