There is abundance of theories about the origin and the nature of cancer. Most of them envision cancer as arising from discrete cellular change. Traditionally this problem has been reduced to one or another of its many aspects without acknowledging that this aspect is only part of a much larger whole, in both space and time.

This reductionism approach, even though indispensable, does not consider a cell as a part of an organized hierarchy, thereby ignoring the role of its hierarchical relationship in the origin and development of cancer.

Figure 1: Detection of pre-neoplastic lesions of the lung using Lung Imaging Fluorescence Endoscopy. Inset shows biopsy of suspicious area. [View Image]

By considering the tissue not only as a collection of individual cells but as a well-organized hierarchical system, we are viewing cancer as a dynamic disorganization of the whole system.

We present different tools which have been developed in order to assess the three different levels of organization in the tissue :

• cellular,
• local neighborhood, and
• global architectural.

The dynamic interactions of these levels as well as the correlation between genotype and phenotype are being investigated.

Intra-epithelial lesions of the lung have been chosen as our tumor model ;

• The very early steps of the system breakdown is analyzed,
• The "reversible" nature of bronchial dysplastic process may be a key element for comprehending the system dynamics.

Material

• 6 µm sections stained with a Feulgen-thionin process
• Morphometric and Architectural Analysis performed with Cancer Imaging Software TISSANA.