What is cancer?

Cancer is a condition where cells in a specific part of the body grow and reproduce uncontrollably. The cancerous cells can invade and destroy surrounding healthy tissue, including organs.

Cancer sometimes begins in one part of the body before spreading to other areas. This process is known as metastasis.

There are over 200 different types of cancer, each with its own methods of diagnosis and treatment.

What drives cancer cells to grow and divide uncontrollably and to escape cell death? Studies of mutations in tumor suppressor genes have provided key answers to this question.

Tumor suppressor genes often function to restrain inappropriate cell growth and division, as well as to stimulate cell death to keep our cells in proper balance. In addition, some of these genes are involved in DNA repair processes, which help prevent the accumulation of mutations in cancer-related genes.

In this way, tumor suppressor genes act as "brakes" to stop cells in their tracks before they can take the road to cancer. Given this situation, loss of tumor suppressor gene function can be disastrous, and it often puts once-normal cells on the fast track to disease.

Cancer cells possess a broad spectrum of migration and invasion mechanisms. These include both individual and collective cell-migration strategies.

Cancer therapeutics that are designed to target adhesion receptors or proteases have not proven to be effective in slowing tumour progression in clinical trials--this might be due to the fact that cancer cells can modify their migration mechanisms in response to different conditions.