Cancer is a disease that stems from a fundamental liability inherent to multicellular life forms in which an individual cell is capable of reneging on the interests of the collective organism. Although cancer is commonly described as an evolutionary process, a less appreciated aspect of tumorigenesis may be the constraints imposed by the organism’s developmental programs. Recent work from single-cell transcriptomic analyses across a range of cancer types has revealed the recurrence, plasticity, and co-option of distinct cellular states among cancer cell populations. Here, we note that across diverse cancer types, the observed cell states are proximate within the developmental hierarchy of the cell of origin. We thus posit a model by which cancer cell states are directly constrained by the organism's “developmental map.” According to this model, a population of cancer cells traverses the developmental map, thereby generating a heterogeneous set of states whose interactions underpin emergent tumor behavior.

癌症是一种源于多细胞生命形式固有的基本责任的疾病，其中单个细胞能够违背集体有机体的利益。尽管癌症通常被描述为一个进化过程，但肿瘤发生的一个不太受重视的方面可能是生物体发育程序所施加的限制。最近对一系列癌症类型的单细胞转录组分析的工作揭示了癌细胞群体中不同细胞状态的复发、可塑性和共同选择。在这里，我们注意到，在不同的癌症类型中，观察到的细胞状态接近于起源细胞的发育层次。因此，我们提出了一个模型，通过该模型，癌细胞状态直接受到生物体的“发育图”的限制。根据这个模型，一群癌细胞遍历发育图，从而产生一组异质状态，这些状态的相互作用支撑着新兴的肿瘤行为。