Top title; basically, what is it about the cells that glioblastoma mutates from that allows it to take over other brain cells, thus making it virtually impossible to fully remove through surgery. And are there other cancers that behave in a similar manner to glioblastoma?
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Well what you’re describing is actually a fundamental trait of all cancers: u restricted growth. Cancer isn’t a single disease, it is a family of diseases, which have certain traits in common. The underlying genetic mutations may be different, but many cancers have some fundamental mutations in common (such as a dysfunction of the guardian of the genome protein, being found in over 50% of cancers). However, the reason why we call all of these diseases by the name cancer is because of the features they have in common, and chief among them is wild unchecked growth.
Healthy cells have checkpoints and safeguards in place that stop them from getting too large and from consuming too many resources. In cancerous cells, these guardrails are broken, and the growth cycles continue on unchecked. What makes glioblastoma so difficult to treat is A) it’s brain cancer, which makes surgery very challenging. B) unlike most other cancers that form a single solid tumor mass, a glioblastoma forms a massive cluster of small tumors intermixed with healthy cells, making removing all the cancer by surgery impossible. This also makes targeted treatments very difficult as well
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