The RASputin effect

By 1916, Rasputin had become an important figure of the corruption of the Romanov court and its treacherous, unpatriotic behavior. For many people on the fringes of the court, Rasputin's corruption was taken as the cause of all of Russia's problems itself. There was the belief that if one could get rid of Rasputin the revolution may not happen. . . . . In a sense, Rasputin's assassination in December 1916, should be seen as just one of a number of palace coup plots.

Orlando Figes Cambridge University

Cells committed to malignancy are subject to a complex series of events prior to reaching their full tumorigenic potential within a given type of cancer. These events are often distinguished by the expression of particular physiological characteristics. The development of a colorectal tumor is probably the best investigated paradigm. Initially, an epithelial cell is driven out of its normal state to give rise to dysplastic aberrant crypt foci. Further genetic events ensue that lead to the advancement through various adenomas, each showing a specific appearance, until a carcinoma arises that ultimately metastasizes (Kinzler and Vogelstein 1996). More generally, tumors originating from different cell types have individual etiologies that may follow a specific path along definable stages. What will be of broad relevance, however, is the acquisition of a set of features that Hanahan and Weinberg (2000) recently defined as “the hallmarks of cancer.” A successful tumor needs to perform the following tasks: it has to (1) attain independence from growth signals, (2) become insensitive to growth inhibitory mechanisms, (3) escape the apoptotic machinery that detects imbalances in cellular behavior, (4) acquire a limitless replicative potential, (5) model its own angiogenic support system, and (6) eventually switch to an invasive and metastatic physiology (Hanahan and Weinberg 2000). The ability of a tumor to corrupt the normal cellular …