★A mind opening dissertation on how our DNA and tumoral cells work.

For nearly two centuries, forgotten medical records have documented a baffling phenomenon: malignant tumors that, in rare cases, regress spontaneously. The scientific community has long dismissed them as “statistical anomalies,” too rare to be understood. But some visionary scientists have continued to investigate.
Andrea Pensotti, a researcher who dedicated his doctoral thesis to this topic, is the author of the first systematic study spanning over a century of research on tumor
reversal. And in this book, he recounts a scientific adventure that spans generations of pioneers, leading to the discovery that is now changing our view of cancer: under certain experimental conditions, cancer cells can be “reprogrammed.” When exposed to the embryonic microenvironment—the place where life builds order—they receive molecular signals that reprogram them toward normal behavior.
This capacity for reversal is not just theory: in acute promyelocytic leukemia, it is already an established therapeutic strategy. And it reveals a fundamental biological principle: a cell’s fate depends not only on its DNA, but on its continuous dialogue with the surrounding environment.
This gives rise to a radically new perspective: living organisms are not deterministic machines closed in on themselves, but a network of dynamic relationships. And cancer, rather than a genetic error, is a crisis of cellular communication which, if understood, opens up unprecedented therapeutic possibilities.
Reversion, with lucidity and clarity, documents how one of medicine’s most enigmatic phenomena is revealing universal principles that could change not only the way we try to treat cancer, but the way we understand life itself.

Andrea Pensotti has a degree in chemistry and pharmaceutical technologies from the University of Milan and a Ph.D. from the Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome with a dissertation on tumor regression, authoring the first international study to systematize this field. Together with Prof. Mariano Bizzarri, he patented a microRNA composition capable of influencing tumor regression processes. Today, he is dedicated to research, technology transfer to industry, and science communication.