Contact Inhibition
Contact inhibition is the cellular mechanism that tells healthy cells to stop growing when they're crowding neighbors.
The difference between healthy growth and cancer is literally the ability to stop.
Cancer cells grow fast. They optimize purely for growth. They ignore normal growth controls - mechanisms like contact inhibition that tell healthy cells to stop growing when they're crowding their neighbors. They metastasize, spreading growth everywhere instead of specific sites. They raise round after round of resources from the bloodstream. Their growth is exponential, their valuations astronomical.
And they kill everything. The host. Themselves. The entire system.
Business Application of Contact Inhibition
Contact inhibition is the cellular mechanism that tells healthy cells to stop growing when they're crowding neighbors. Cancer cells ignore this control. Companies that ignore analogous growth controls - market signals, resource constraints, organizational limits - often become 'unicorns' that destroy themselves and their ecosystems.
Contact Inhibition Appears in 2 Chapters
Cancer cells ignore contact inhibition and normal growth controls - they optimize purely for growth and destroy host, themselves, and entire system.
Growth without inhibition →Contact inhibition requires sensors, signal pathways, and halt mechanisms - missing any component allows runaway growth that becomes cancerous.
The mechanics of growth control →