Abstract
Understanding the biology of cancer is one major advanced achievement in approach for cancer remission. Although discovery of 10 hallmarks of cancer has played a beneficial role towards this, guiding the understanding of cancer development, metastasis and drive to rational drug design, hallmarks of cancer may not have ended. Besides, there is little or no due consideration to the substratum of cancer development. Sequel to some novel observations emanating from current understanding of cancer development, I reviewed the existing 10 hallmarks of cancer considering new biological trademarks that would augment further the understanding of tumor/cancer biology. I looked into the bedrock of tumor cells, considering that in line with the definition of current hallmarks of cancer, cancer cells may acquire all the functional capabilities to enforce its independent capacities and achieve autonomous potentials for proliferation, unending replication and subsequent metastasis, but without this adequate substratum obtained by colonization and stromatogenesis of the stroma, the development may not progress. I found that cancer development is highly based on the ability of the overwhelmingly mutated cells to colonize the normal tissue stroma in other to form their own stroma. I highlighted on the strong defensive and accommodating framework of the normal stroma and its originality in body defence and revealed the: strong dependency of the aggressive mutated cells on the stromal framework; ability of the mutated cells to reverse the stroma activities for their independent development and subsequent invasiveness and metastasis, without which tumor microenvironment may not be formed. I suggested that stromal colonization and stromatogenesis is an acquired functional capability from mutational changes or genetic alterations that induced abnormal and aggressive behavior on the transformed cells, aggressive enough to overwhelm and polarize the defensive functional nature of the stroma cells to suit its autonomous progressive tendencies.
Keywords