Tumor Ecosystem: An Ecological View of Cancer Growth and Survival

This book intends to report new concept of onco-spheres in cancer ecosystem.  Onco-spheres are defined as where cancer cells (living organisms) dynamically interact with nontumor cellular (other living organisms) and noncellular components (non-living environmental factors) in the ‘host’ internal environment (habitat) to construct a self-sustainable cancer ecosystem, which can be scoped at three different levels: primary/regional, distal and systemic onco-spheres.

Cancer cells should be conceived as ‘living organisms’, interacting with cellular or noncellular components in the host internal environment, not only with the local tumor microenvironment (TME) but also constantly communicating with a distant organ niche as well interacting with the host’s nervous, endocrine and immune systems, to construct a self-sustainable ‘biosphere’, as we termed the tumor ecosystem. By looking at the interaction of cancer and host as a unique ecosystem, we will use ecology principles to further delineate the features of the dynamics of the tumor ecosystem.

As the pioneer in proposing this concept, we feel that this full-scale overview of the tumor ecosystem is able to inform the readers about this concept, and to pave the way for designing novel therapeutic strategies on actionable targets within tumor ecosystem. The book is likely to be of interest to immunologist, biologist, medical students, researchers and general public who wish to learn more on this new concept of tumor ecosystem, and how this could be applied in many fields of research.

Erwei Song is Professor of Breast Surgery at Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU), Member of Chinese Academy of Sciences, “Cheung Kong Scholar" Chair Professor, CMB (China Medical Board) Distinguished Professor and Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (UK). Currently, he serves as President of Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, SYSU. Erwei obtained his M.D. and Ph.D. at Zhongshan Medical School, and was trained as a surgeon at Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, SYSU. He received postdoc training at Harvard Medical School in 2002 and became an instructor at the CBR Institute of Biomedical Research at Harvard in 2004. His early publication “RNA interference targeting Fas protects mice from fulminant hepatitis” in Nature Medicine was the first to report that siRNA could be used therapeutically in whole animal disease model. This finding was selected as one of the “Top Ten breakthroughs of the year 2003” by Science. In 2005, he returned to China and set up his own lab at Sun Yat-sen University. 

 As a clinician scientist, he is keen to address scientific questions derived from clinical practice. He is among the first doctors in China to perform breast-conserving surgery for breast cancer patients, which preserves the microenvironment tissues for activation of anti-tumor immunity. His study has proposed and solidified “the Theory of Tumor Ecosystem”, which sheds new lights on immunotherapy. He has identified various new subtypes of cancer-associated immune cells and mesenchymal cells, new receptors of various crucial cytokines, and a new archetype of long non-coding RNAs that function as signaling molecules to regulate intracellular or intercellular signal transduction. These findings provide new therapeutic strategies for targeting tumor microenvironment as well as immunotherapies for solid tumors. By comparing patient samples before and after treatments, he has also demonstrated the critical role of miRNAs in regulating the biology of cancer stem cells (CSC).

 Prof. Song has published 156 SCI research articles, including Nature (1 paper), Cell (3 papers), Cancer Cell (3 papers), Nature Immunology (2 papers), Nature Cell Biology, Nature Cancer, Science Translational Medicine, Nature Communications (4 papers), etc. Owing to his academic achievements, Prof. Song was invited to contribute a review article on tumor microenvironment for Nature Reviews Drug Discovery and chair an international Cell Symposium for Cell Press on “Functional RNAs”. As a surgeon, Dr. Song compiled the first Chinese Experts Guidelines for Breast-conserving Surgeries of Early Breast Cancer. By far, his research papers have been cited for 12012 times. As the corresponding author, he has published 73 research articles, with one of them being cited for 1458 times and sixteen of them being cited for more than 100 times. 

 Prof. Song serves as the associate editor for BMC Cancer, Cancer Science, Science China-Life Sciences, Journal of Bio-X Research, and the reviewing editor for Journal of Biological Chemistry, as well as the editorial board member of Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy. His research work was selected as Top Ten Scientific and Technological Breakthrough by the Ministry of Education in China in 2008 and 2018, respectively. He has won numerous awards, including the “Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation Award” and the “National Natural Science Award” by the State Council of China, etc. In 2020, he was granted with the National Innovation Award by the Ministry of Science and Technology, the JCA International Award by the Japanese Cancer Association and the TWAS Award in Medical Sciences for his contribution to proposing and reinforcing the theory of tumor ecosystem.