Are all the different cancers really that different or is it all just cancer and we just specify where it formed?
In: Biology
The reason we name cancers based on where they start is because during the time in history when people were naming cancers, that’s the most obvious difference they could see in the autopsy.
Normal cells have to make new normal cells, but only when it’s needed. We need to make new blood and skin cells to replace old ones…but it’s a delicate balance, we can’t make too much or to few. Same with lung tissue. The cells get old or damaged and need to be replaced
Normal cells interpret a lot of different chemical signals to know when it’s time to make new cells. Some signals are like traffic signals, and say when to speed up production and when to stop making new cells. If the DNA in a cell gets damaged, the cell might have problems “interpreting the traffic signals”
If DNA is damaged and the cell thinks a red light is always on, or a green light never turns on…no one cares, the cell just dies.
Cancer is when a cell becomes broken in a way where it mis-reads the signals, and shit gets wild. Maybe a green light is broken and never turns OFF, or a red light it broken and the cell can’t stop. The cell makes a new cell when it wasn’t supposed to. This “baby” cell has the same defect, and continues misreading the signals… and so on. That’s when cancer happens.
The old names like “lung cancer” stick because it’s still easiest to “see” where it is, and it doesn’t make much difference to the patients which gene is broken. Doctors and researchers today may characterize a cancer by which specific gene is broken, because some drugs work better at killing specific cancers.
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