Description
Book SynopsisThis comprehensive, ground-breaking title presents, in simplifying style, the driving and organizing principles of cancer, making this multidimensional, highly complex disease easily understandable for readers. Developed out of the renowned author’s many years of teaching a widely popular, several-hundred-student college course, this 12-chapter book begins with an account of the history of cancer as a medical and public health problem, as well as the major milestones and setbacks in the ongoing quest to understand the wide variety of cancers that continue to impact the world. Subsequent chapters then address pathogenesis, incidence and mortality statistics, risk factors, causal factors, screening challenges and victories, treatment strategies, and disease prevention approaches. This wealth of clinical information is further supplemented with socioeconomic discussions on the financial, social, ethical, technological, regulatory, political, and logistical challenges that limit progress in cancer research. A soon to be gold-standard text that thoroughly and expertly describes cancer as a composite, adaptive system,
Cancer: The Enemy from Within equips and empowers all undergraduate students and graduate students to better understand this continually perplexing disease. Clinicians across all disciplines may also find this work of great interest.
Table of Contents1. The nature and origins of cancer
Cancer as a family of diseases coming from normal cells using normal cell traits in abnormal ways
Cancer as a developmental process
Organization / taxonomy of the neoplasias/ terminology
2. Principles of cancer initiation, promotion and progression
Mutation, growth, clonal heterogeneity
Principles of cancer pathology: form and function and deviation from normal
Key concepts of invasion and metastasis
3. Behavioral hallmarks of cancer
Key behavioral traits that allow cancer cells to outcompete normal cells
Molecular basis of these key behaviors
Cancer as an evolutionary system
Caner as a complex adaptive system
4. History of cancer – how did we get here?
Transformative discoveries
Major advances in cancer biology, etiology, and treatment - foundations for current thinking and present day practice
5. Who gets cancer and why?
Cancer epidemiology worldwide
Causal risk factors
Non-causal risk factors
6. Screening
Why do it?
What does it take?
What works and what are the recommendations?
7. Diagnosis and Assessment
Detection and diagnosis
Classification: type, grade, stage, molecular features
Prognostic factors, predictive factors and treatment planning
8. Localized treatment of cancer
Principles and types of oncologic surgery
Principles and types of radiation therapy
Other ablative therapies
9. Systemic therapy
Cytotoxic drugs
Hormonal therapies
Targeted therapies
Immunotherapies: (+CAR-T genetic engineering) current reality, future vision
Therapy as selective pressure and the emergence of resistance
Principles of therapy: efficacy, toxicity; cost-benefit
10. End of Life Issues: Personal and Medical
Palliative care: what it is and how it is used
Overuse of therapy at end of life
Hard decisions: when to stop treatment
11. Development of new cancer therapies: evolution and revolution
The ethical, economic, and scientific aspects of translational cancer research
Regulatory requirements
The evolution of clinical trials
12. Cancer and society Cancer and the law: Right to Die; Right to try
Cancer as big business
Economics of cancer care delivery: Who pays and for what? Who decides?
