GENERAL OVERVIEW OF THE PROCESS OF CARCINOGENESIS

A general synthetic overview of the process of carcinogenesis is prese nted. The following points are discussed: the uniqueness of tumor dise ase with respect to other pathologies; tumors viewed as a pathology of the transduction system of signals that regulate the communal life of the cells of multicell organisms; the tumor as a genetic disease of s omatic cells; carcinogenesis as a multistage event; the fundamental ro le of physiologic and pathologic rhythms of cell proliferation in the modulation of tumor incidence; mechanisms entailed in the maintenance of genome integrity; mechanisms involved in the protection of genome i ntegrity from exogenous and endogenous causes of degradation of the ge netic message.