My understanding of cancer is that an organ’s cells tgo rogue. It starts to multiply uncontrollably and this affects certain functions of that organ. Moreover, this behaviour spreads to other organs resulting in uncontrollable cell multiplication of that organ and so on.
What I don’t understand is how does the uncontrolled cell multiplication of one organ “spread” to another wherein that impacted organ also begins to show this behaviour? How can say breast cells impact lungs by spreading to them considering they are both different organs, functions, cells.
In: Biology
Its not an organ its cells as you pointed out yourself. And cells are just smal specs of tissue that can float in your blood.
Cancer might form from the cells of some specific organ, but the cells can then move to any place of your body.
They dont “infect” other organs, they just land there, they are still cells that originaly belonged to the old organ.
Cells have molecules on them that make them stick together which is why you don’t fall apart into a blob of mush. These molecules are produced by genes in a cell. Cancer cells turn these genes off, so cancer cells no longer have these molecules. Which means that they stop sticking to other cells and can start moving around. So that cell, when it divides, can migrate directly onto another organ or slip into your blood or lymph and get carried down the river (so to speak) until it falls out like silt. Cancer cells from a body all originate from the same cell (unless you have more than one cancer which is rarer)
Cancer cells have the ability to multiply rapidly, it is one of the key indicators of cells being cancerous. When the cancer reaches what is known as stage 4 when they metastasize, basically bits break off from the original lump and then flow round the circulation system and settle in a new location possibly to the liver, lungs or bones, when at these locations they start to interfere with the normal functions of these organs and that is when the cancer becomes lethal. https://youtu.be/Q5–K1nUOM4
Cells aren’t always just immobile per say. Even when they are a part of a tissue, during replication they can as a group branch out and invade nearby tissues. They can also break off and invade on their own, especially since these are some of the characteristics cancer mutations can encourage.
Now, pretty much every tissue of your body needs to have access to your vasculature system–to the circulating fluids through your veins and arteries and capillaries and the like. These cells can potentially break off the tumor mass and flow elsewhere to your body, where they embed themselves in the new location, multiply, and produce new tumors. This process of spreading is metastasis, and is one of the big lines that make cancer progression suddenly much more serious, terminal, and unrecoverable at times–one tumor mass is a lot more manageable than the case where you have one original mass and an untold number of secondary tumors spread throughout your body (some potentially not even detectable). Treatment after that point becomes more complicated and potentially even futile.
To my knowledge, one of the reasons why lung cancer is so bad is because of how well situated it is to jump into spreading through your blood stream.
One of the key features of cancer cells is that they usually stop performing their primary functions in favor of just growing and dividing more. So when you get liver cancer, those liver cancer cells aren’t behaving like liver cells should, they are mostly just behaving like cancer cells. They take nutrients from the healthy liver cells and slowly “take over” until you hardly have any liver cells actually doing their jobs.
Then one of these cells (or a cluster of cells) breaks off, finds its way into your bloodstream, and hitches a ride to a new location, say your lungs. Now those cancer cells start to mess up the environment in your lungs, steal nutrients that your lung cells were using, spit out a bunch of molecules that encourage other cells to become cancer-like, and generally cause havoc. You’re absolutely right, these are not lung cells, and that’s the main problem. They will continue to grow and divide until you have so many cancer cells in your lung tissue that the lung cells get crowded out and can’t do their jobs anymore. It’s these types of effects that ultimately causes death in most terminal cancer patients.
In addition to metastasis (the technical term for cancer spreading), a key search term you can use to learn more is “dedifferentiation” or “ poorly differentiated” cells. “Differentiation” is the process by which your stem cells turn into specialized cells and learn to perform their specific functions (like lung cells exchanging oxygen gas, or liver cells breaking down alcohol in your blood). Cancer unwinds this process and starts to look more like stem cells, hence the term “de-differentiation” and referring to advanced cancer cells as “poorly differentiated”.
This was a hard read as I’ve been outrunning a stage 3 and different one at stage 4. But I don’t like to stick my head in the sand. What if one was caused by HPV? You can’t kill HPV so does it wait to create more cancer? I’ll be honest it’s a bummer to think about.
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