Are all the different cancers really that different or is it all just cancer and we just specify where it formed?
In: Biology
If you’re interested in this subject, I really like the treatment by Siddhartha Mukherjee in the “Emperor of All Maladies,” as you’ll get a sense of how understanding of this developed. Originally, it was hoped that cancer was one disease caused by a virus or from some other cause. Unfortunately, this turned out to not be quite right, although cancers can be caused by viruses (HPV for example). Cancers share one common feature: DNA mutation. What this means is that the mutation causes cells to behave improperly, with things like tumor suppressor genes turned off (uncontrolled replication, as other commenters have mentioned). While there are common mutations in many types of cancer, there is also a diversity of pathways that result in cancer. There can be very common genes that are mutated (BRCA2 is a classic example in breast cancer), but overall, this is very complicated unfortunately, which is why some treatments are common, but all treatments don’t work against all types of cancer. People with one defective copy of a gene at birth can be more susceptible because they have no backup if the other copy also gets mutated.
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