Cancer also knows how to wait: Study uncovers the hidden step between mutation and tumor biomass appearance

The development of cancer is not a process triggered immediately by the emergence of an oncogenic mutation. There is growing evidence for the existence of an intermediate phase—hitherto poorly defined—in which mutated cells remain in a latent state, "accumulating the potential needed to grow, like a biological time bomb," explains Antonio Gentilella, a professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences at the University of Barcelona and head of the Cancer Metabolism Research Group at the Bel