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NURS 366 Oncology Lecture Notes
- Institution
- Virginia Commonwealth University
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Biology of CancerCancer
Leading cause of suffering and death. Treatment depends on stage
● There’s Diseases in which abnormal cells divide without control and are able to invade
other tissues
● Tumor- also referred to as neoplasm- new growth
Benign vs. Malignant Tumors: identified by a process of evaluation (staging, grading)
Benign Tumor (non-cancerous)
- Grow slowly
- Well-defined
- Not invasive (doesn’t spread to other tissues/systems)
- Well differentiated
- Low mitotic index
- Do not metastasize (no spread)
Malignant tumor (cancerous)
- Grow rapidly
- Not encapsulated
- Invasive (spread beyond original site)
- Poorly differentiated (cells don’t look nothing like they should)
- High mitotic index
- Can spread distantly (metastasis) ability to spread beyond original site
Classification and Nomenclature
● Benign tumors
● Named according to the tissues from which they arise, include the suffix <-oma=
- Lipoma: that’s benign tumor from fat cells
- Leiomyoma
- Meningioma: benign tumor that originates from meningitis/brain
● May progress to cancer. That’s why they still required to monitor the tumor
● Malignant tumors
● Named according to the tissues from which they arise
○ Carcinoma
- Malignant tumor that arises from epithelial tissue
○ Adenocarcinoma
- Arises from ductal or glandular tissue (breast,glandular tissue cancer)
○ Sarcoma
- Mesenchymal tissue (skeletal muscle cancer)
○ Lymphoma
- Lymphatic tissue(lymphatic system)
○ Leukemia
- arises from blood- forming cells (hodgkin's disease)
, ● Carcinoma in situ (CIS) - type of carcinoma
- Preinvasive epithelial tumors of glandular or epithelial orgain that haven’t
broken through the basement membrane or invaded the surrounding
stroma.
- (a cancer that’s very early stages, hasn’t spread beyond, no metastasis.
Can find situ lesions in stomach, breast, large bowel)
Biology of Cancer Cells
● Cancer is predominantly a disease of aging. (Increase risk as aging)
● Multiple mutation are required before cancer can develop the older we get
● Clonal proliferation or expansion (biology of cancer cells)
○ As a result of mutation, a cell acquires characteristics that allow it to have
selective advantage over its neighbors
- Results in increased growth rate (cancer cells multiply and spread
beyond) or decrease in apoptosis (decrease cell death)
- Cancer cells don’t allow the cell to die
● Transformation of normal cells to cancer cells
○ Decreased need for growth factors to multiply
- Tumor has own oxygen and nutrients , don’t need anything, able to feed
themselve
○ Lack of contact inhibition
○ Anchorage independence
○ Immortality - cancer cells last
Sustained Proliferative Signaling (first mark of cancer is uncontrolled cellular proliferation)
● Proto-oncogenes
- Normal genes that direct protein synthesis and cellular growth. Designed to
regulate normal cellular proliferation
● Oncogenes (cells that invade)
- Mutant genes
● Tumor- suppressor genes
- Encode proteins that in their normal state, negatively regulate proliferation
- Also referred to as anti-oncogenes
- Cancer cells inactivate this gene
● Oncogene activation
- Point mutation in RAS (<rat sarcoma=) gene that converts from regulated to
unregulated (meant to be regulated but cancer cells turns it around to allow
mutation, this contribute to development of cancer)
- Translocations: gene breaking off creating mutations
- Burkitt lymphomas
- Chronic myeloid leukemia
- Gene amplification
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