Ecology and Evolution of Cancer

Ecology and Evolution of Cancer is a timely work outlining ideas that not only represent a substantial and original contribution to the fields of evolution, ecology, and cancer, but also goes beyond by connecting the interfaces of these disciplines. This work engages the expertise of a multidisciplinary research team to collate and review the latest knowledge and developments in this exciting research field.

The evolutionary perspective of cancer has gained significant international recognition and interest, which is fully understandable given that somatic cellular selection and evolution are elegant explanations for carcinogenesis. Cancer is now generally accepted to be an evolutionary and ecological process with complex interactions between tumor cells and their environment sharing many similarities with organismal evolution. As a critical contribution to this field of research the book is important and relevant for the applications of evolutionary biology to understand the origin of cancers, to control neoplastic progression, and to prevent therapeutic failures.

• Covers all aspects of the evolution of cancer, appealing to researchers seeking to understand its origins and effects of treatments on its progression, as well as to lecturers in evolutionary medicine
• Functions as both an introduction to cancer and evolution and a review of the current research on this burgeoning, exciting field, presented by an international group of leading editors and contributors
• Improves understanding of the origin and the evolution of cancer, aiding efforts to determine how this disease interferes with biotic interactions that govern ecosystems
• Highlights research that intends to apply evolutionary principles to help predict emergence and metastatic progression with the aim of improving therapies

Beata Ujvari is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Integrative Ecology, Deakin University, Australia. She will take up a senior lecturer position in Bioinformatics and Genetics at the School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University from January 2017. She has been the Chair of the Comparative Oncology Special Interest Group, Cancer Research Network, University of Sydney (2012- 2014), a member of the program and organizing committee for the Sydney Cancer Conference and member of the program committee for the VetSci conference (2013-2014). As an evolutionary ecologist, her research focuses on the interaction between organisms and their environment and these effects on organismal fitness, particularly with the aim to explore the significance of genetic and epigenetic organismal responses to both macro- and micro environmental challenges. Dr Ujvari has authored more than 90 refereed journal articles, book chapters and conference papers, including multidisciplinary topics such as evolution, animal behavior, and ecology as they relate to cancer.

Benjamin Roche is a researcher at the at the Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Research on Cancer (CREEC) and at Research Institute for Development (IRD) in the UMMISCO lab (International Research Unit for Mathematical and Computational Modeling of Complex Systems). With a background in theoretical modeling and evolutionary ecology, he has authored more than 60 scientific papers in international scientific journals focusing on evolutionary ecology of infectious diseases, ecology and evolution of cancer or public health. His cancer research is focusing on projects related to the role of ecology and evolution processes in cancerous cell proliferation, with particular interests in tumor ecology, the indirect role of infectious diseases in cancer incidence through an eco-immunological perspective and Peto’s paradox (or how to identify natural resistance to cancer in wildlife animals).

Frédéric Thomas is Directeur de Recherches at the Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Research on Cancer (CREEC), and UMR CNRS (Maladies Infectieuses et Vecteurs: Ecologie, Génétique, Evolution et Contrôle), both in Montpellier, France. He has authored or co-authored more than 195 refereed journal articles (with more than 5570 citations) on topics such as cancer, disease, and evolutionary biology, and animal behaviour, as well as co-edited 11 books on biodiversity, ecology, evolution, and parasitism. He is frequently invited to present at international meetings and is Associate Editor of both the Journal of Evolutionary Medicine and Evolutionary Applications.