Cancer fullt frisk
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Get email updates from NCI. Cancer can start almost anywhere in the human body, which is made up of trillions of cells. Normally, human cells grow and multiply through a process called cell division to form new cells as the body needs them.
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When cells grow old or become damaged, they die, and new cells take their place. These cells may form tumors, which are lumps of tissue. Tumors can be cancerous or not cancerous benign. Cancerous tumors spread into, or invade, nearby tissues and can travel to distant places in the body to form new tumors a process called metastasis. Cancerous tumors may also be called malignant tumors.
Many cancers form solid tumors, but cancers of the cancer fullt frisk, such as leukemiasgenerally do not. Benign tumors do not spread into, or invade, nearby tissues. Benign tumors can sometimes be quite large, however. Some can cause serious symptoms or be life threatening, such as benign tumors in the brain. Researchers have taken advantage of this fact, developing therapies that target the abnormal features of cancer cells.
What Is Cancer?
For example, some cancer therapies prevent blood vessels from growing toward tumorsessentially starving the tumor of needed nutrients. Cancer is caused by certain changes to genes, the basic physical units of inheritance. Genes are arranged in long strands of tightly packed DNA called chromosomes. Cancer is a genetic disease—that is, it is caused by changes to genes that control the way our cells function, especially how they grow and cancer fullt frisk. The body normally eliminates cells with damaged DNA before they turn cancerous.
This is part of the reason why there is a higher risk of cancer later in life. As the cancer continues to grow, additional changes will occur. Even within the same tumor, different cells may have different genetic changes. Cancer is caused by changes to DNA. These changes are also called genetic changes. A DNA change can cause genes involved in normal cell growth to become oncogenes.
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Unlike normal genes, oncogenes cannot be turned off, so they cause uncontrolled cell growth. In normal cells, tumor suppressor genes prevent cancer by slowing or stopping cell growth. DNA changes that inactivate tumor suppressor genes can lead to uncontrolled cell growth and cancer. Cancer cells can change the microenvironment, which in turn can affect how cancer grows and spreads. Immune system cells can detect and attack cancer cells.
But some cancer cells can avoid detection or thwart an attack. Some cancer treatments can help the immune system better detect and kill cancer cells. Genetic changes that cause cancer can be inherited or arise from certain environmental exposures. Genetic changes can also happen because of errors that occur as cells divide. Most often, cancer-causing genetic changes accumulate slowly as a person ages, leading to a higher cancer fullt frisk of cancer later in life.
Cancer cells can break away from the original tumor and travel through the blood or lymph system to distant locations in the body, where they exit the vessels to form additional tumors.
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This is called metastasis. The genetic changes that contribute to cancer tend to affect three main types of genes— proto-oncogenestumor suppressor genesand DNA repair genes. Proto-oncogenes are involved in normal cell growth and division. However, when these genes are altered in certain ways or are more active than normal, they may become cancer-causing genes or oncogenesallowing cells to grow and survive cancer fullt frisk they should not.
Tumor suppressor genes are also involved in controlling cell growth and division. Cells with certain alterations in tumor suppressor genes may divide in an uncontrolled manner. Cells with mutations in these genes tend to develop additional mutations in other genes and changes in their chromosomes, such as duplications and deletions of chromosome parts. Together, these mutations may cause the cells to become cancerous.