The Immune System and Responses to Cancer: Coordinated Evolution

Abstract

This review explores the evolutionary interaction and co-development between immune system and somatic evolution. Over immense durations, continuous interactions between microbes, aberrant somatic cells, including malignant cells, and the immune system have successively shaped the evolutionary development of the immune system, somatic cells and microorganisms through continuous adaptive symbiotic processes of progressive immunological and somatic change providing what we observe today. The immune system is powerful enough to remove cancer and induce long-term cures. Our knowledge of how this occurs is just emerging. It is less clear why the immune system would detect cancer cells, when it is usually focused on combatting infection. Here we show the connections between immunity, infection and cancer, by searching back in time hundreds of millions of years and more to when multi-cellular organisms first began, and the immune system eventually evolved into the truly brilliant and efficient protective mechanism, the importance of which we are just beginning to now understand. What we do know is that comprehending these points will likely lead to more effective cancer therapies.