Cancer as STOP Resistance: Rethinking the Core of Oncogenesis
Modern oncology has achieved significant success in describing the molecular mechanisms of uncontrolled cellular growth. However, the dominant paradigm still treats cancer primarily as a problem of acceleration, hyperactivation, and excessive signaling stimulation. This work proposes an alternative conceptual framework in which the core of oncogenesis is not so much the amplification of growth signals as the systemic loss of a cell’s ability to perceive and execute stop signals (STOP signals). We consider cancer as a state of acquired STOP resistance and discuss the implications of this view for the interpretation of remission and the prospects of therapeutic strategies. 1. Introduction: an asymmetry of attention Over the past decades, the cell biology of growth and division has been studied in great detail. Oncogenes, growth factors, proliferative signaling cascades, metabolic shifts—all of these form a dense and well-mapped landscape. At the same time, systems of biological sto...