- #1
mark!
- 150
- 13
I have a question regarding the development of cancer.
Cancer can be a genetical mutation inside a cell that can have an external/environmental cause, such as UV light, oncogenes in food sources, or with the help of oncoviruses and carcinogenic bacteria. Other than that, cancer is also said to be able to develop “spontaneously”. But this process doesn’t seem spontaneous to me.
The way in which a cancer cell cuts itself loose from the group after a cancer cell has grown (metastasis), and goes into the bloodstream to eat his way through the blood vessel (with the enzyme 'protease' and so-called MMPs to break the tissue), start increasing growth hormones, and prevents programmed cell death (apoptosis) but instead signals the body for blood vessels to grow towards the cancer cell (angiogenesis) and telomerase becomes active to make sure this process can’t be stopped.
This doesn't seem solely and purely mechanical and spontaneous, rather it behaves like a pathogen. Cancer cells suppress the immune system (or evade immune responses by disrupting those cells, signals an receptors) the same way pathogens do. Viruses for instance can neutralise the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) which cells use to present antigens to the immune system. Tumors do this as well, so there are similar mechanisms to avoid detection and destruction, and they resemble pathogens in manipulative ability.
What I don’t understand is how this step-by-step process can be initiated by a cancer cell if it's considered a lifeless “spontaneous” consequence of “random” mutations. Lots of pathogenic parasites also show a step-by-step process, and need several hosts to end up in the host they finally need to reproduce in. Tapeworms and other parasitic flatworms for instance have complex lifecycles in which specific developmental stages are completed in a sequence of several different hosts.
Is this really a spontaneous event? Or are viruses and cancer cells perhaps not 100% lifeless? Where is this desire in cancer, viruses and other pathogens to reproduce coming from?
Cancer can be a genetical mutation inside a cell that can have an external/environmental cause, such as UV light, oncogenes in food sources, or with the help of oncoviruses and carcinogenic bacteria. Other than that, cancer is also said to be able to develop “spontaneously”. But this process doesn’t seem spontaneous to me.
The way in which a cancer cell cuts itself loose from the group after a cancer cell has grown (metastasis), and goes into the bloodstream to eat his way through the blood vessel (with the enzyme 'protease' and so-called MMPs to break the tissue), start increasing growth hormones, and prevents programmed cell death (apoptosis) but instead signals the body for blood vessels to grow towards the cancer cell (angiogenesis) and telomerase becomes active to make sure this process can’t be stopped.
This doesn't seem solely and purely mechanical and spontaneous, rather it behaves like a pathogen. Cancer cells suppress the immune system (or evade immune responses by disrupting those cells, signals an receptors) the same way pathogens do. Viruses for instance can neutralise the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) which cells use to present antigens to the immune system. Tumors do this as well, so there are similar mechanisms to avoid detection and destruction, and they resemble pathogens in manipulative ability.
What I don’t understand is how this step-by-step process can be initiated by a cancer cell if it's considered a lifeless “spontaneous” consequence of “random” mutations. Lots of pathogenic parasites also show a step-by-step process, and need several hosts to end up in the host they finally need to reproduce in. Tapeworms and other parasitic flatworms for instance have complex lifecycles in which specific developmental stages are completed in a sequence of several different hosts.
Is this really a spontaneous event? Or are viruses and cancer cells perhaps not 100% lifeless? Where is this desire in cancer, viruses and other pathogens to reproduce coming from?
Last edited: