HORMONE-MEMBRANE-MITOCONDRIUM-APOPTOPIC THEORY OF TUMOROGENESIS ACHIEVEMENTS, CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS FOR THE NEXT DECADE

Objective: To develop a rational theory of cancer pathophysiology.Material and Methods: The bibliographic review of international and personal publications, in interaction with the experiences of clinical practice and its inevitable subjective component, influenced by therapeutic successes and failures, have for the author a scenario that is described below.The disease "cancer" is a set of multifaceted and multifactorial morbid entities.Furthermore, such a nosological entity shows an evolution through sequential steps whose order has not been fully clarified.Its presence among human beings dates back to ancient times, perhaps to the very beginnings of human presence in the world, and is also shared by other living beings.Its research under the rules of scientific reasoning has already exceeded a century.A production mechanism still with unknown segments and an enormous, deep and costly research effort without a final success, have promoted concerns that cover the wide spectrum that goes from a strict and exclusive scientific conception to other modalities that, at their extreme, constitute distortions opposed to science and ethics, the latter particular approaches that have been discarded in this work.However, healthy inspirations, eventually epiphanies such as that of one of the bibliographical references, followed by rational verification, emerge as another proposal of the present work.Therefore, the complementarity between Faith and Reason would constitute a viable conception in scientific production.Results: The establishment of new multi-objective investigations, inspired by the variety of factors hypothetically involved in the disease such as: hormonal alterations, membrane disruption, mitochondrial dysfunction and non-homeostatic apoptosis, may have an important place in basic and clinical cancer research.Conclusions: In the context of the above data, the proposed objective has been achieved.An achievement that, with a view to the future, appears preliminary and fragile.Going forward, some actions remain uncertain: their dissemination, their acceptance as a hypothesis, their adoption as a rational basis for laboratory work and their integration into clinical research protocols.At least; new facts that constitute as many challenges.