Research Papers

Is chimerism associated with cancer across the tree of life?

In this intriguing paper published in PLOS ONE in June 2023, ACE researchers and their colleagues studied the association between chimerism and cancer across the tree of life.  A chimera is an organism has that has cells from two or more genetically distinct sources. ...

Cells eating other Cells – found across the tree of life!

In this fascinating study in Scientific Reports, ACE researchers, Stefania Kapsetaki (now at Tufts University), Luis H. Cisneros and Carlo Maley trawled the literature to discover that cell-on-cell cannibalism is a behavior that occurs in both cancer cells and normal...

Birds species that lay more eggs get more cancer

Bird species that have small clutches tend to get less cancer than species that have large clutches.  That's the conclusion of an international team of scientists that includes several ACE researchers.  The team studied the necropsy records of close to 6000 birds...

Reuniting philosophy and science to advance cancer research

The use of philosophical methods to pin down definitions and conceptualizations in cancer research could help sort out the wooly thinking that is pervasive in the subject and help scientists from different disciplines to better collaborate, argues a discussion paper...

ACE Scholars Program – a Big Success!

ACE Scholars Program – a Big Success!

We are so proud of our ACE Scholars! They are undergraduates in many disciplines who come from all around the nation to help us understand the evolution and control of cancer.  The students devote hours each week to the program, working individually and then meeting ...

The need for evolutionary theory in cancer research

This easy to read article by ACE's Amy M. Boddy, just published in European Journal of Epidemiology (2022), argues that even if we could  understand all the mechanisms for cells to turn cancerous, it wouldn't be enough to help us treat and avoid the disease.   For...

ACE Research paper in the journal Nature

Phenotypic plasticity and genetic control in colorectal cancer evolution is the second article by ACE researchers published in Nature on 26 October 2022.  Here they show that genetic variation within a colorectal tumor doesn't often affect gene expression traits and...