The role of trophoblastic epigenetic reprogrammation in benign tumor cells on malignant progression: a mollecular hypothesis

Cancer tissues and placental ones share many properties such as invasiveness, metastasis and local immunosuppressive effects. The goal of the present article is to hypothesize a theory about cancer origin that links placental and cancerous tissues at mollecular level. This hypothesis explain that cancer origin could be due to low hypoxic conditions in the peripheral zones of benign tumors which might up-regulate the expression of IGF2, and, consequently, trophoblastic genes. In fact, many phenotypic characteristics and molecular markers are shared between these two cell types (cancerous and trophoblastics ones), providing evidences to support this hypothesis.
Source: Medical Hypotheses - Category: Biomedical Science Authors: Source Type: research