Abstract
Most current therapies are directed toward “fighting” cancer by playing against its strengths. Here, I suggest that alternative strategies that would be directed against cancer evolutionary weaknesses by taking advantage of potential vulnerabilities inherited from our unicellular ancestors should also be developed. This requires a shift in focus from understanding the many ways through which cancer succeeds in exposing and exploiting its evolutionary limitations. Such strategies can involve driving cancer lineages to extinction (evolutionary demise not aggressive killing) or slowing their progression. A bottom–up approach (as opposed to the top–down approaches currently used) that takes into account the evolutionary history of basic cellular mechanisms and life history traits and how they have been coopted during the evolution of multicellularity could help identify general principles that might be applicable to all types of cancer.
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