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Asked by 358gdna36 to Arthur, Clare, Daniel, David, Tora on 7 Nov 2014.
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Arthur Dyer answered on 7 Nov 2014:
That’s a great question!
Cancer cells look the same as any other cell in our body from just looking at them. That’s why it’s so hard to treat. It’s normally only when you look at what’s going on inside the cell that there are differences.
Cancer starts when our own cells loose control somehow (either through a mutation in the DNA or damage of some kind) and then divide and grow without stopping.
Normal cells have checkpoints that stop the cell growing or splitting or making more DNA etc until they need to but cancers have damaged checkpoints so grow like crazy.
The reason your white blood cells can’t attack cancer is because it looks basically the same as a normal cell. I’ll take a few pictures of some of my cancer cells and normal cells i’m growing and upload it to my profile so you can have a look and see if you can spot the difference!
(sorry I rambled so much in this answer it’s just a great question)
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Tora Smulders-Srinivasan answered on 7 Nov 2014:
Cancer cells don’t necessarily look different from normal cells. However, quite often they move around a lot more.
I’ve done some experiments on cancer cell lines in dishes in the lab where we image the cells over time and track their movements. The cancer cells definitely move (migrate) a lot more than the normal ones!
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Daniel Parsons answered on 7 Nov 2014:
What an interesting question. From what I know I think they look really similar to all our other cells in our bodies and that is why its hard to stop them – its like a big game of hide and seek. They also grow super fast and don’t stop and that’s the problem with them in many ways – they can’t be identified quickly enough and can’t be controlled. My Granddad, Nanna and my Dad died of cancer so I know how hard doctors are working to try and treat people with the disease first hand – I hope in the future we can find a clever cure that can identify the cancer cells as they hide amongst our normal cells and they can be targeted and destroyed before they damage us.
Comments
daisyfreeman1 commented on :
I loved reading about cancer cells so now when we learn about them I will know thanks for that great answer!!!:)