According to the statistics,
cancer is the second causes of human’s death after a coronary heart diseases
and it is a disease that due to the rapid growth of an abnormal cells in the
body that not under control and has ability to invade other types of tissues.
The history of cancer comes from Hippocrates, the Greek physician is believed
to be the first person to use the word “carcinos”, which describes both the ulcer-forming
and non-ulcer forming tumors spread and the word shortened to “cancer” after a
long period.
There are many types of cancer and each is classified by the organ
or type of cell that is initially affected. The types of cancer can be grouped
into different categories which are carcinoma, sarcoma, leukemia, lymphoma or
myeloma and central nervous system cancers. Carcinoma which is cancer that
begins in the skin or in tissues that line or cover internal organs, while sarcoma is cancer
that begins in bone, cartilage, fat, muscle, blood vessels, or other connective
or supportive tissue. Leukemia is cancer that starts in blood-forming tissue
such as the bone marrow and causes large numbers of abnormal blood cells to be
produced and enter the blood where lymphoma and myeloma is the cancers
that begin in the cells of the immune system and lastly is central nervous
system cancers that begins in the tissue of brain and spinal cord.
The body is
made up of many types of cells. These cells grow and divide in a controlled way
to produce more cells as they are needed to keep the body healthy. When cells
become old or damaged, they die and are replaced with new cells. However,
sometimes the orderly process had goes wrong. The genetic material (DNA)
of a cell can become damaged or changed and producing mutations
that affect normal cell growth and division. When this happens, cells do not
die and new cells form when the body does not need them. The extra cells may
form a mass of tissue called tumors. Tumors can grow and interfere with the
digestive, nervous and circulatory systems. They can release hormones that
alter body function.
The tumors can be differentiate into two which is benign
that is not cancerous and stay on one spot which means it will not spread to
others part of the body while malignant tumor that considered as dangerous
formed. The process is called invasion when malignant tumors manages to moves
throughout the body using the blood or lymph systems and angiogenesis occur
when cells manages to divide itself to making new blood vessels to feed itself.
It is called to have metastasized when a tumor spreads to others part of body
and leads to destroying of other healthy tissues.
The differences between normal
cell division and cancer cell division.
The differences between normal cell and cancerous cell
Explaining cancer with animation