Cancer signalling beyond the genes

I am very pleased to share a new perspective with Andre Levchenko on a question that has occupied many conversations between us over the years: how should we think about cancer signalling if genes are not the whole story?

In this piece, we argue that cancer is not simply a collection of mutations, but a tissue state defined by distorted cellular information processing.

Oncogenic mutations matter greatly, but often as context-dependent modifiers of biochemical information transfer rather than as simple pathway switches.

That perspective helps reconcile several enduring observations in the field, including the presence of canonical driver mutations in non-malignant tissues and the remarkable finding that cancer cells can sometimes behave normally again in an embryonic milieu.

It also points towards a different therapeutic logic: not only targeting altered genes or individual pathway nodes, but finding ways to restore or re-route the fidelity of multicellular signalling in cancer.

A brief perspective, but one that is very close to both our scientific thinking. I hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed writing it!