What is the root cause of cancer?

[plakhapate]

I understand that uncontrolled growth of cells result into cancer.

If this is true , what causes uncontrolled growth of cells?

P.J.LAKHAPATE
plakhapate@rediffmail.com

 

[Hercules Rockefeller]

what causes uncontrolled growth of cells?

Mutations in the genes that encode the proteins that control the growth of cells.

 

[Idle Mind]

Mutations in the genes that encode the proteins that control the growth of cells.

Say that 5 times fast.

 

[alexb123]

Did you know the body's cells suffer 100,000 DNA damaging incidents a second. There is a lot that can go wrong with the sheer scale of cells we contain.

 

[alexb123]

I understand that uncontrolled growth of cells result into cancer.

If this is true , what causes uncontrolled growth of cells?

P.J.LAKHAPATE
plakhapate@rediffmail.com

I thought that it wasn't so much the growth of cells but the lack of ability to die, which leads to abnormal growth.

 

[Hercules Rockefeller]

I thought that it wasn't so much the growth of cells but the lack of ability to die, which leads to abnormal growth.

No two cancer types are the same. But, in general, cancer requires both loss of senescence (ie. escaping cell death) and loss of control of the cell cycle (ie. uncontrolled proliferation).

 

[Athena]

The cell cycle is likely controlled by a gene regulator (the promoters of activators, operons, etc.), that signals the proliferation of proteins to carry out mitosis. Or maybe it could inhibit the regulation of RNA polymerases by the promoter for any gene, making transcriptional regulation impossible.

 

[Hercules Rockefeller]

What?

Each checkpoint of the cell cycle is controlled by multiple regulatory proteins. eg. cyclins and cyclin dependent kinases (CDKs). There are probably at least a couple of dozen key regulators of the cell cycle, all of which are potential oncogenes or tumor suppressor genes.

 

[John99]

I wonder if the human body itself causes cancer/ Providing you live long enough. Old age=heart stops beating, kept alive with machines....cancer....

 

[Hercules Rockefeller]

Indeed. This is more or less why I have wondered whether we will ever cure cancer. We may develop non-invasive cures for some specific types of cancer, but I doubt we will for "cancer" as a whole. Why not? Because cancer is inexorably linked to the fundamental cellular processes of DNA repair, division, growth, differentiation and senescence. Cancer is a consequence of the most basic processes of eukaryotic cellular life.