• Question: What is the difference between cancer and a tumour?

    Asked by Resh@science to Jimi on 15 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Jimi Wills

      Jimi Wills answered on 15 Mar 2016:

      Cancer is defined by the following things:

      1) the ability of cells to grow and divide forever (usually there’s a limit)
      2) the ability of cells to grow without growth signals from the body
      3) the ability of cells to grow despite signals from neighbouring cells to stop
      4) the ability of cells to escape the immune system

      there are other things that can happen later.

      There are two types of tumour: benign and malignant…

      A malignant tumour is a bunch of these cells together. A tumour grows and develops the ability to manipulate its environment to make its own blood vessels so it can grow bigger and bigger. Eventually some cells can develoipe the ability to migrate to another place in the body and start a new tumour.

      A benign tumour is a growth that is not cancerous… that means the cells might be dividing a little more than they should, but they’re not cancerous, and they’re not going to spread to other areas.

Comments