|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
What is cancer?
Cancer is a general term used to describe the group of diseases where cells grow in an uncontrolled and purposeless way inside the body.
Cancer isn’t just one disease – there are over two hundred types of cancer. Many cancers can be cured, others can be controlled and symptoms can be relieved by modern treatment.
Find out about …
Cells and cell growth Natural history of cancer What causes cancer? How is cancer found? Naming and classifying cancer – including staging Cancer treatments Find out more
Go to our Online library
Read About cancer
What is cancer?
To understand cancer, it helps to know a bit about cells. Our bodies are made up of millions of cells. They are extremely small – it would take hundreds to cover the head of a pin.
Inside the cell is the nucleus which acts as the control centre. Every nucleus contains genetic information coded in DNA and arranged in 46 chromosomes (23 pairs). There are thousands of genes (segments of DNA) in each chromosome – they control inherited characteristics such as physical appearance. Genes also control day to day activity, structure and multiplication of cells.
There are many different and specialised cells that make up the tissues and organs of the body – they all look different, and have different tasks. In a healthy body, they all work together like a well oiled team.
Our bodies grow and repair through cell division – an orderly process where a cell divides to form two daughter cells exactly the same as the parent cell. They have the same number of chromosomes and set of genes.
Most cells have a limited life – and our bodies work to maintain the right number and type of cells that we need. When some cells die, others replace them – this is a complicated process that is usually well controlled.
Cancer is abnormal cell growth
We use the word cancer to describe cells that grow and spread around our bodies in an uncontrolled way. It probably starts in a single abnormal cell, which over time continues to reproduce more and more cancerous cells. These groups of cancer cells are called tumours. Cancer cells may
 remain immature and be quite different in appearance to ‘normal cells’ divide and reproduce more quickly than usual, and in a haphazard way compete with normal cells for nutrients and space, but have no useful role in the body be able to invade and destroy adjacent tissues and organs separate from the original growth and spread around the body through the blood or lymph systems. Then they can establish in other areas of the body.Cancer is dangerous because it can grow and spread. We use the term malignant to describe cancer – a malignant tumour is cancer. Some tumours are not cancer.
 Top |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Info & support 
