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A conceptual illustration of the chess battle between the cancer cells and the anti-cancer drugs. Most cancer deaths are related to the development of drug resistance and the formation of metastases. In both processes, the cancer cells face difficult and new challenges and a strain: finding a bypass for the drug, or a way to adapt to a foreign and hostile tissue. Unfortunately, the cells often manage to overcome these challenges. How does this happen? This is a complex process, and among other things, the cells go through a process of learning, which involves trial and error, while searching among a large number of configurations and internal states. The theory of learning theory constitutes a mental and mathematical framework for understanding these processes. A review of the current literature shows that basic concepts of learning theory provide an explanation for results that do not correspond to the popular concept. Linking the search process to a concrete mathematical model demonstrates its feasibility. (Illustration: Harel Spring)

Lethal learning: a new interpretation of adaptive mechanisms of cancer cells

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