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Miguel Bronchud: What Can Cancer Learn from the Placenta? Introducing the PIES Hypothesis

Miguel Bronchud/LinkedIn

Jun 16, 2025, 04:34

Miguel Bronchud: What Can Cancer Learn from the Placenta? Introducing the PIES Hypothesis

Miguel Bronchud, Co-Founder and Advisory Board at Regenerative Medicine Solutions, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“Sunday afternoon is a great time to relax and play with new AI tools because it is not only useful but fun. As a veteran cancer physician (since 1983 in the wards but a decade or so earlier in the labs) I had to adapt to Electronic Health Records (1990s onwards): this meant dropping my pen and paper Clinical History (even drawing tumor stage or specific Onc diagrams) and switching to PC and EHR protocols and programs: none perfect but all useful.

In clinical consultation, it was easy to look at the PC windows rather than at the patient but that was a mistake easy to correct for empathy and good clinical practice.

I remember, for example, one of my students looking at biochemistry results on the PC screen rather than at the patient with clinically obvious jaundice…

The good news with Generative AI is that the communication and learning processes are mutually reciprocal and the improvement of the quality of text and content is almost immediate.

Here is (I share it as an example) my experience on my latest complex contribution to cancer research and new information and ideas – on a subject matter that obviously requires more research and better understanding:

What Can Cancer Learn from the Placenta? The PIES Hypothesis and the Evolutionary Reuse of Immune Pathways

By M.H. Bronchud, MD, PhD

Imagine a system that can suppress the immune response just enough to allow a genetically different organism to grow and thrive inside your body. That’s exactly what happens during human pregnancy – and it works astonishingly well.

Now imagine that cancer cells are exploiting the same ancient biological trick.

This idea lies at the heart of the Placental Immune Editing Switch (PIES) hypothesis: a new conceptual framework that suggests aggressive cancers may ‘borrow’ or re-activate immune-modulating programs originally developed by the placenta during pregnancy.

These programs didn’t evolve to help cancer – they evolved to protect the fetus. But cancer cells, in their relentless search for survival strategies, may be tapping into these same biological systems.”