Question: How does a cancerous cell form?

Annabel Black answered on 8 Jun 2022:

Essentially, cancer cells are just our own normal cells which have gone quite wrong! Everyday our cells divide and make new versions of themselves to keep our bodies working normally. Sometimes during cell division things go wrong and normally the cells themselves or our body’s immune system will recognise this ‘wrong’ cell and destroy it. However, sometimes this isn’t recognised and the cell is allowed to divide and keep on dividing making more and more ‘wrong’ versions of itself – this is how cancer forms. When groups of cells like this divide so much they become tumours and sometimes parts of tumours can move away from the original group (called the primary tumour) and move to other parts of our body – this is called metastasis. Metastatic tumours are trickier to treat because now there can be multiple tumours in different places and when tumour cells grow in a new organ they can behave differently – this means the medicine that kills cancer cells in the primary tumour might not work so well in the metastatic tumour. This aspect of cancer is what I currently research and I look at how our immune system talks to the cancer cells to help or stop them spreading to other parts of the body!