Cancer: It Takes a Village—Insights from Shervin Takyar, MD, PhD

What allows a cancer cell to proliferate and metastasize? Is cancer a product of evolutionary selection? How do the leading hypotheses in cancer research apply specifically to lung cancer?

Tune in for the answer, and discover:

• Whether the pathway that allows an injured cell to survive could be the same or similar pathway for cell proliferation and the development of cancer
• Which two factors are universally recognized as risks for lung cancer, and under what circumstances non-smokers might get lung cancer
• How cell-to-cell signaling between different cells plays a role in the development of cancer

Shervin Takyar is an associate professor at Yale School of Medicine and practicing pulmonologist who joins the show to discuss his experience with cancer, both in research and in the clinic. His work is focused primarily on endothelium, which is an important part of the tumor microenvironment, and also on what happens before cancer develops, rather than what to do once it has. 

What factors predispose a person to develop cancer? And which individuals are likely to develop recurrence or resistance to cancer therapies? Takyar answers a number of compelling questions, and in the process, explains what he believes to be the common denominator of all cancers, and how cancer might be viewed as the product of cycles of evolutionary selection.

He also discusses how the seed-and-soil theory applies to lung cancer, cell-to-cell signaling, where primary lung tumors tend to spread and why, ongoing research looking at advanced lung tumor samples, field cancerization, what makes a tumor successful, whether there are epigenetic markers that can tell which patients have higher tolerance for tumor cells, and more.