Are all the different cancers really that different or is it all just cancer and we just specify where it formed?
In: Biology
In one sense you could say they are all the same. Cancer at its most basic is a just a proliferation on cells. So whether you’re talking about liver, bone, breast ect., the general process is the same and often the cause of death is the same; young cells (undifferentiated) are created at such a rate that they begin to congest an area and eventually consume so many resources that the human begins to die, a physiological coup within your own body.
“Cancer” is just when a cell mutates enough that it forgets its suppose to die, and then multiplies without constraint.
So in theory each cell could have a different type of “cancer”. And in fact each cell could mutate multiple ways that impact the disease.
For example some cancers (her2 for example see certain hormones as a “trigger” to grow. So we can reduce those hormones to slow it down.
Others like tnbc (which I’m dealing with in my family) are unknown how they are triggered and are far harder to stop or deal with.
But both of those can come from the milk glands in breast tissue.
They are different and depending on what kind you have treatments differ as well. They can’t all be treated with chemo. For example my dad has stage 4 kidney cancer. When he was diagnosed he had the main tumor on his kidney which was the size of a softball and then 48 tumors in his lungs. Kidney cancer responds poorly to chemo. Instead he was treated with immunotherapy and then removal of the kidney. Over a year since the surgery and still no sign of the cancer returning to his body.
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.
Hi. Med student here, having studied a lot of cancer. I’ll do some simple crash course for you.
Cancer is somewhat of a misnomer, it’s more correct to talk about neoplasm. A neoplasm encompasses benign and malignant processes and gets more of the stuff you think about when it comes to cancer. That being said, neoplasms are fairly intricate and can be broken down into categories.
Neoplasms are usually graded on their histologic/morphologic appearance, that is how they appear on a microscope/with special stains. This is done to gauge how aggressive the tumor is and allows for staging so we can more accurately treat the neoplasm. We also use something called immunohistochemistry stains to understand if there are special markers present on the neoplasm that can clue into whether it’s come from elsewhere in the body or if there are special mutations that allow us to target it with special medications.
Once we have it graded or characterized it’ll put into a variety of categories, such as small cell or adenocarcinoma, each arising from specific tissue (or more accurately are similar to an existing tissue in the body). This will help with understanding if it’s benign and how clinical work up and treatment should proceed. It also lets us know if it’s metastatic, that is it came from another tissue site, such as breast cancer traveling to the lungs.
So with that background, let’s address your question. Yes, all cancers are actually very different. A benign neoplasm like nasal cell carcinoma (skin neoplasm that 1/3 of white people het) will be very different to a glialblastoma (metastatic and invasive brain tumor that kills everyone in less than 2 years). They are very different under microscope, but there are some similar looking cancers that can pop up in different sites (like small cell carcinoma in the esophagus or lungs).
However, there is one guiding principal that you are somewhat right on, that is the origin of the neoplasm. The neoplasms are generally categorizes based on the tissue they look similar to and most likely came from (adenocarcinoma comes from mucous producing cells). That being said this can occur in many different places.
This is also somewhat difficult at times, as the very aggressive (malignant) neoplasms that are the most scary are poorly differentiated, that is the cancer is growing so quickly it no longer resembles any tissue and is just a mass of quickly dividing cells.
That should cover it! There is more in depth stuff like if it’s necrotizing or if it’s infiltrated with immune cells, but that’s more specific for classification and gets away from our general overview.
Hope I helped! Rely if you have questions 😀
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