Are all the different cancers really that different or is it all just cancer and we just specify where it formed?
In: Biology
Your cells have many ways to trigger the same reactions within them. Even the same types of cancers may have different parts of a same reaction pathway damaged. There are also mutations in cancer that, although they won’t affect the diseases behavior, might make the cancer resist different types of treatments. The smallest difference in a cell’s mutation could be what determines whether a patient can survive/go into remission or only delay the disease.
Think of it this way, if you wanted to make scrambled eggs, there are so many ways you could scramble the eggs. You could use a fork, an egg beater, knives, or a blender, and the end product would be the same. If someone wanted to stop you from making scrambled eggs, they would need to know what specific way you use to make them, and also know if you have any alternate way of making them. If they went in blind and took your forks without knowing you use an egg beater, then they’d change nothing. Cancer is the same way. You can reach the same issues in a cel through so many different ways. Then, you have to partly hope that the treatment you use damages the specific mechanism that mutated or that it hurts a part of the cell’s DNA that the cancer isn’t already ignoring.
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