01Many diseases, shared goals
There are hundreds of cancer types, but in 2000 Douglas Hanahan and Robert Weinberg argued they all acquire the same core capabilities: sustaining proliferative signaling, evading growth suppressors, resisting cell death, enabling replicative immortality, inducing angiogenesis, and activating invasion and metastasis.
In 2011 they added reprogramming energy metabolism and avoiding immune destruction, plus two 'enabling characteristics': genome instability and tumor-promoting inflammation.
02Using the framework
The hallmarks are a map for thinking about any mutation: ask which capability it provides. A KRAS mutation sustains proliferative signaling; p53 loss resists death and enables instability; VEGF secretion induces angiogenesis.
They also map onto drug classes — almost every hallmark now has at least one approved therapy aimed at it.