Learning from Plants: Is It Possible to Make an Animal Organism a Non-Host for Cancer?

Cancer is one of the most significant global health problems and a leading cause of death worldwide. The origins of cancer are diverse and may stem from natural biological processes over time or directly result from anthropogenic activities. The complete elimination of all cancer-causing events within a living organism is highly unlikely. A more promising strategy would be to prevent tumors entirely by making the organism an unlivable environment where cancerous cells cannot survive. Surprisingly, this plausible alternative remains virtually unexplored. For the most part, it is not about the odds of cancer cells emerging in a hostile environment, rather than about their ability to adapt and persist within it. Plants have a broad-spectrum mechanism of defense against pathogens called non-host resistance (NHR), when an entire plant species is resistant to all isolates of a microbial species. While the NHR is effective against pathogens whereas cancer cells are perceived by an organism as “self” or “altered self”, they are still de facto “foreign intruders” since they generate neoantigens, novel proteins absent from normal tissues. Considering this, what are the theoretical possibilities of making a human organism an absolute non-host for cancer? As nearly all basic mechanisms and components of the NHR in plants have similarities to cancer responses in vertebrates, the task might be more feasible than it appears.