Are all the different cancers really that different or is it all just cancer and we just specify where it formed?
In: Biology
Cancer is one of your body’s cells having a Bender moment: “Fuck this, I’m going to make my own organism, with hookers and blow!”
Basically the cancer starts with a mutation that allows it to grow and survive independently of the body’s normal control mechanisms, and in competition with the body over resources. In a lot of ways you can consider a cancer to be like its own organism evolved from the person its inhabiting. In fact, there is at least one instance of such a cancer cell line far outliving the host.
Because of this, there are really any number of ways that a cancer can form. That said, there are some specific genes that tend to be involved in many or most cancers, those having to do with tumor suppression, those linked to cell ‘kill switches’, etc. Many cancers also have a slightly different metabolism or impaired metabolism in some form too.
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