Table 1:

Comparison of key parallel factors for invasive mammalian species eradication and cancer treatment, and the relative impact of each factor on treatment success.

	Invasive mammals	Cancer	Relative impact on treatment success
Distinctiveness between host/invader	High: Millions of coding point mutations between invader and native species	Low: <1000 coding point mutations between tumor and normal cells	Lower treatment specificity and success against cancer than treatments against mammalian island invaders.
Genetic diversity among similarly treated species	Genetic differences are high: millions of coding mutations between different species.	Genetic differences are low: <100,000 coding germline differences between patients and <1000 coding mutations between patient tumor / germline.	Treatment response varies little between mammalian species but varies much between different cancer types.
Invader intrapopulation heterogeneity	Low: small populations (~103 for rats on most islands) and low mutation rates	High: large number of cells (~109) and high mutation rates	Cancers have more opportunities for evolution of resistance.
Invader environment interactions	Decoupling of invader genetics and ecological environment	Primary tumor genetics evolve in a fixed microenvironment, followed by decoupling at metastasis.	Microenvironment may be more targetable in cancer, especially for primary tumors. Rats are robust across island environments.