There is a relatively new theory saying that malignant, metastatic cancer cells behave like single cell organisms, and that cancer basically represents an unwanted return to our genetic roots; multicellular organisms used to be single cell organisms a billion years ago and the original genes might carry on within our DNA until today. But they should be switched off. Once they are switched on, the cells will stop cooperating with the rest of the tissue and start acting "selfishly", at others' expense.
This is known as "atavistic theory of cancer" and it is rather controversial, there are people who utterly hate it, not least because the original authors are not specialists in cancer treatment.
Part of this theory is that cancer cells "cannot help but switch to the previous single-celled metabolism, very inefficient compared to ours".
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5474827/
This is known as "atavistic theory of cancer" and it is rather controversial, there are people who utterly hate it, not least because the original authors are not specialists in cancer treatment.
Part of this theory is that cancer cells "cannot help but switch to the previous single-celled metabolism, very inefficient compared to ours".