[Verse 1]
Picture the cell as a car on a hill,
RAS is the pedal that's jammed and won't still,
One copy flips and the engine won't quit,
KRAS in the pancreas, lit like a wick,
MYC guns the throttle, HER2 rides the chrome,
RET keeps on revving, won't drive itself home,
Just one mutant copy, that's all that it takes,
Gain of function screaming, nobody's got the brakes.
[Chorus]
One hit wonder, oncogene thunder,
Stuck accelerator, tearing the cell asunder,
Tumor suppressors are the brakes wearing thin,
Lose them both, lose them both, let the chaos in,
RAS and MYC and HER2 and RET,
TP53, RB, APC, don't forget,
One hit to rev it, two hits to fail,
That's the whole engine, that's the whole tale.
[Verse 2]
Now meet the brake pads, the guardians inside,
TP53's the sentinel, genome's quiet guide,
Half of all cancers, this watchman's undone,
When both of his copies go dark, one by one,
RB holds the cell in a patient, quiescent rest,
Quiescent means sleeping, not dividing, at its best,
APC reins in the gut's wild bloom,
BRCA stitches breaks, or the tissue meets its doom,
Both copies gotta fail, that's the brake-line rule,
Recessive at the cellular, tumor-growing school.
[Chorus]
One hit wonder, oncogene thunder,
Stuck accelerator, tearing the cell asunder,
Tumor suppressors are the brakes wearing thin,
Lose them both, lose them both, let the chaos in,
RAS and MYC and HER2 and RET,
TP53, RB, APC, don't forget,
One hit to rev it, two hits to fail,
That's the whole engine, that's the whole tale.
[Verse 3]
Nineteen seventy-one, Knudson drew the chart,
Retinoblastoma split the hit into two parts,
Inherited kids carry hit number one,
Born with the loaded gun, half the damage done,
Second hit lands early, both eyes catch the blow,
Sporadic cases wait, need two strikes, slow,
One eye, one later date, that's the sporadic way,
Both eyes blooming young when the inherited genes betray.
[Bridge]
MLH1, MSH2, the repair crew gone AWOL,
Spell-check of the genome just stopped its patrol,
Microsatellites stutter, slipping out of place,
Lynch syndrome hands down this unstable chase,
But all that stutter-code waves a checkpoint flag high,
Immunotherapy thrives when mismatch repair goes awry,
More mutations, more flags for the immune cells to find,
MSI-high tumors answer the drugs that seek and bind.
[Chorus]
One hit wonder, oncogene thunder,
Stuck accelerator, tearing the cell asunder,
Tumor suppressors are the brakes wearing thin,
Lose them both, lose them both, let the chaos in,
RAS and MYC and HER2 and RET,
TP53, RB, APC, don't forget,
One hit to rev it, two hits to fail,
That's the whole engine, that's the whole tale.
[Outro]
One copy stuck, or a double brake-fail,
Count up the hits and you'll read the whole tale.