Understanding Cancer
Curator: Prabodh Kandala
Welcome to the section “Innovations in Cancer Therapy” under “Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence Services”. Under this section, a group of people who have expertise in any area pertaining to cancer will share information about the advancements in cancer research. Because, this is the first post under the section “Innovations in Cancer Therapy”, we shall start with the basic understanding of cancer disease. As time proceeds, the other experts may join the journey to share and write new things about this malignancy.
Cancer is one of the leading diseases in United States. National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimates approximately 1,638,910 new cases of cancer and 577,190 deaths due to this malignancy.
Cancer is a disease in which there is uncontrolled multiplication and spread within the body of abnormal forms of the body’s own cells. In short, it is distorted version of our own normal body cells. Following features differentiates our normal cells from the cancer cells.
Cancer cells proliferate in uncontrolled fashion.
Cancer cells can dedifferentiate and lose the control of several regulatory mechanisms.
Cancer cells can invade to other organs through blood and lymph systems.
Cancer cells can metastasize to other organs.
We all know that body is made up of many types of cells. These cells function in tightly regulated manner. For example, if a cell becomes old or damaged, it undergoes a process called apoptosis (cell death) and replaced by a new cell. However, such regulated process may sometimes go wrong. A normal cell can turn into its cancerous counterpart because of one or more inherited or acquired genetic mutations in DNA. As a result, cells do not die and keep on proliferating leading to cancer.
Any body organ is susceptible of acquiring cancerous phenotype. Broadly, cancer can be classified into following.
1. Carcinomas: These cancers begin in skin or other body tissues such as ovaries, colon, pancreas, lungs etc. Usually, these cancers are of epithelial origin.
2. Sarcomas: Sarcomas are cancer of connective tissues. For example, cancers that begin in bone, cartilage, fat, muscles and other connective or supportive tissues are classified under this category.
3. Leukemia: They originate in bone marrow and produces large number of abnormal blood cells in our circulation.
4. Lymphoma and Myeloma: These cancers begin in the cells of immune system.
5. Central Nervous System cancers that begin in the tissue of brain and spinal cord.
Very often, tumors and cancers are used interchangeably. However, it has to be noted that only malignant tumors are considered to be cancerous. Benign tumors are harmless and they can be usually removed by surgery. Benign tumors do not spread to other body parts. On the other hand, malignant tumors can spread to other parts of the body. Often, cancers are difficult to cure.
One of the reasons cancer is very difficult to treat is that it is a multiple disease that involves our own body cells. Targeting cancer cells may jeopardize the life of normal cells. However, the war on cancer has started almost a century ago. Many scientists are involved in delineating what causes cancer and what can be done to treat this malignancy.
In the future posts, we shall dig deeper into the world of cancer.
Prabodh Kandala
Great beginning, please continue to post. I wish to review a Research plan for this category which you are an OWNER of. Any posts in the making for the other categories you have selected? Thank you
Aviva