Abstract
One of the most firmly held beliefs in the field of oncology is that once a cell has been converted into a true tumor cell the resulting heritable change is of a permanent and irreversible type. This concept of irreversibility has for about a century now so completely dominated the thinking of cancer biologists that until quite recently few attempts were made to determine whether it might, in fact, be possible to cause a true tumor cell to revert to a benign or normal state under appropriate experimental conditions. There are now a number of well documented examples ranging from tumors of higher plant species to those of man in which a reversal of the neoplastic state has been achieved experimentally. Several examples of this type will be described and the possible significance of these findings as they relate to the nature of the heritable change will be discussed.
The investigations reported here were supported in part by a research grant (PHS grant CA-06346) from the National Cancer Institute, U.S. Public Health Service; a research grant (NSF grant GB-197) from the National Science Foundation; by a Maude K. Irving Memorial Grant for Cancer Research and a Berte Abramson Memorial Grant for Cancer Research (grants E-159B and E-159C) from the American Cancer Society, Inc.
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Braun, A.C. (1968). The Multipotential Cell and the Tumor Problem. In: Ursprung, H. (eds) The Stability of the Differentiated State. Results and Problems in Cell Differentiation, vol 1. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-35089-8_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-35089-8_8
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