Some aspects of invasive insect pests affecting crops may resemble, from a biological standpoint, the cancer cells originate and grow after a human tissue can spread to adjacent organs, spreading the disease. A recent multidisciplinary study published in the journal Cancer Research (Cancer Res 2009 vol. 69:4894), including mathematical models of tumor growth, suggests that it may be preferable for patients on drug therapy modulated, to allow maintenance a "controlled population growth", rather than more aggressive treatment with high doses of chemotherapeutic agents that can, in return, favor the selection and subsequent growth of cell populations resistant to treatment. The possibility of using selective drugs against disease-causing agents has been the major goal of biomedical science. The most notable success was the discovery of antibiotics. However, in the case of cancer this selectivity of treatment is harder to achieve. The idea of \u200b\u200boncologists, for more than fifty years has been to try to remove as many cancer cells as possible, trying to increase the dose of cytoxan agents. In the case of insect pest used as a metaphor, it has been to verify that is many times more effective pesticides apply only when the invasion exceeds a threshold that endangers the harvest. Hundreds of invasive species of insects are controlled by a moderate use of pesticides, which can maintain a restrictive population growth avoiding the emergence of resistant strains. The above study concludes that in cultured tumor cells a small population of cells resistant to treatment within heterogeneous global population keeps growing more restrictive, since these cells use very much of its cellular energy to maintain this resistance active rather than use it to multiply. Therefore, non-resistant cells grow better and somehow restrict the growth of those that are. When a therapy with high doses of cytotoxic agents eliminates most sensitive cancer cells, resistant cells are more easily adueñarían tissue, without any competition coming now can grow better, if any, to cause a cell population not only with the ability to invade tissues, but with the distinction of being resistant to drug treatment. Thus maintaining a controlled population of tumor cells sensitive to drugs used to compete and inhibit cell growth resistant, can be an alternative to consider in therapy against cancer. The studies are too preliminary for doctors or patients to accept review the existing treatment regimens, but this work suggests that evolutionary theory proposed by Darwin 150 years ago to explain the natural selection and evolution of species, may have paralleled by the evolution of heterogeneous cell populations that exist in most tumors and may help design more effective treatments for patients.
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