Cancer neuroscience: State of the field, emerging directions.

The nervous system governs both ontogeny and oncology. Regulating organogenesis during development, maintaining homeostasis, and promoting plasticity throughout life, the nervous system plays parallel roles in the regulation of cancers. Foundational discoveries have elucidated direct paracrine and electrochemical communication between neurons and cancer cells, as well as indirect interactions through neural effects on the immune system and stromal cells in the tumor microenvironment in a wide range of malignancies. Nervous system-cancer interactions can regulate oncogenesis, growth, invasion and metastatic spread, treatment resistance, stimulation of tumor-promoting inflammation, and impairment of anti-cancer immunity. Progress in cancer neuroscience may create an important new pillar of cancer therapy.
Competing Interests: Declaration of interests M.M. holds equity in MapLight Therapeutics. M.M. and H.S.V. report the patent (US Patent #10,377,818) “Method for treating glioma.” F.W. and W.W. report the patent (WO2017020982A1) “Agents for use in the treatment of glioma.” F.W. is a co-founder of DC Europa Ltd (a company trading under the name Divide & Conquer) that is developing new medicines for the treatment of glioma. Divide & Conquer also provides research funding to F.W.’s lab under a research collaboration agreement.
(Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)