Evolutionary Stem Cell Poker and Cancer Risks: The Paradox of The Large And Small Intestines

Quantifying substantial carcinogenesis of genetic and environmental factors from measurement error in the number of stem cell divisions

Background

The relative contributions of genetic and environmental factors versus unavoidable stochastic risk factors to the variation in cancer risk among tissues have become a widely-discussed topic. Some claim that the stochastic effects of DNA replication are mainly responsible, others believe that cancer risk is heavily affected by environmental and hereditary factors. Some of these studies made evidence from the correlation analysis between the lifetime number of stem cell divisions within each tissue and tissue-specific lifetime cancer risk. However, they did not consider the measurement error in the estimated number of stem cell divisions, which is caused by the exposure to different levels of genetic and environmental factors. This will obscure the authentic contribution of environmental or inherited factors.

Methods

In this study, we proposed two distinct modeling strategies, which integrate the measurement error model with the prevailing model of carcinogenesis to quantitatively evaluate the contribution of hereditary and environmental factors to cancer development. Then, we applied the proposed strategies to cancer data from 423 registries in 68 different countries (global-wide), 125 registries across China (national-wide of China), and 139 counties in Shandong province (Shandong provincial, China), respectively.

Results

The results suggest that the contribution of genetic and environmental factors is at least 92% to the variation in cancer risk among 17 tissues. Moreover, mutations occurring in progenitor cells and differentiated cells are less likely to be accumulated enough for cancer to occur, and the carcinogenesis is more likely to originate from stem cells. Except for medulloblastoma, the contribution of genetic and environmental factors to the risk of other 16 organ-specific cancers are all more than 60%.

Conclusions

This work provides additional evidence that genetic and environmental factors play leading roles in cancer development. Therefore, the identification of modifiable environmental and hereditary risk factors for each cancer is highly recommended, and primary prevention in early life-course should be the major focus of cancer prevention.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12885-022-10219-w.

Somatic cell evolution: how to improve with age

A recent article published in this journal illuminates a rare example of somatic evolution where cells improve rather than deteriorate with age. In mitotic intestinal crypts, stem cells with higher levels of a deleterious heteroplasmic germline mitochondrial mutation are purged through time, leading to crypts without the mutation. Similar somatic mitochondrial mutations are not purged from crypts, indicating that special conditions are needed to improve with age. Copyright © 2018 Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.