Cancer: Cell Structures, Carcinogens and Genomic Instability

This volume began with an invitation from the publishers to edit a volume of EXS on Cancer. This invitation undoubtedly derived from my articles in Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences in 2002 and 2003 on the relationships between the morphology, aetiology and pathogenesis of tumours, especially in relation to genetic instability. After many years of teaching the theories of c- cer in undergraduate medical school courses, it seemed to me that the variably chaotic histopathologic features of tumours parallel in some way, the variably unstable genomes of tumour cells, which were being discovered in the 1990s. Thus the title of the volume has come to include morphology, carcinogenesis and genetic instability. The invitation came while I was working with Herrn Dr. med. Hubertus Jersmann (MD Düsseldorf, PhD, now Senior Lecturer in Medicine of the University of Adelaide) and Professor Brian Coghlan (Emeritus Professor of German, the University of Adelaide), on the work of the nineteenth century cancer pathologists, especially David Paul von Hansemann (1858–1920). With the delivery of the manuscripts from the authors of the chapters, it became obvious that a background chapter for the volume could include some of the material which we had “uncovered” together. Because of this, chapter 1 is authored by the three of us, and the “new” material figures prominently.