Bailie Nelson

Cancer Research
Friday November 7th

The cells in the human body must divide to keep the body growing and functioning.
Cancer develops during mitosis when abnormal cells are produced instead of normal cells. Any
tissue that already has a high rate of cell division is inherently more susceptible to
carcinogenesis, the development of cancer, because division gives cells the opportunity to
undergo a series of genetic mutations, each on making the next generation of cells more
abnormal. Once the cell cycle is out of control, its checkpoints are not working and apoptosis is
not occurring. Yet, the cells live on and keep dividing even though they are abnormal. (Pickrell)
Abnormal cell growth can affect any tissue in the body and form tumors wherever they want.
The abnormal cells stack on top of each other instead of lying flat next to their neighbors like
normal cells. Like normal cells cancer cells need a blood supply to receive oxygen and nutrients
so cancer cells will undergo angiogenesis. Angiogenesis is the formation of new blood vessels
but the middle of the tumor may not receive enough oxygen so it may pull more blood vessels to
form on the tumor. When cancer metastasizes, or moves to other places in the body, it means the
abnormal cancer cells make their way into invading blood vessels or lymph vessels and travel
into other tissue. The abnormal cells also use the enzymes that produce to break down the
membranes and invade other cells. When these cells begin new tumors far from the primary
tumor, metastasis has occurred. Not many cancer cells achieve this feat (maybe 1 in 10,000) but
those that successfully metastasize spread the cancer throughout the body. (Pickrell) As long as
the human body has been on the earth it has been susceptible to abnormal cell growth. Before xray and surgery early medicine could only treat what they could see. They didnt have high tech
labs to test the different tissues of the body.
The development of the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) was developed a few
years ago when the number for deaths by cancer were increasing. The 19 biggest cancer
researchers came together to form this organization to research activities and avoid wasted effort.
It has already found neglected areas of research and treatment, such as palliative care and lung
cancer, and made them priorities. Another of its successes has been the creation of a database
known as the Informatics Initiative. Its goal is to bring information gained in every area of
cancer science and medicine together into one place. Basic research will remain just as important
to the overall cancer effort, however. Richard Sullivan, the head of clinical programs at Cancer
Research UK, which along with the Department of Health is funding the Experimental Cancer
Medicine Centers, says that cancer research starts a lot further than early drug tests maybe
further than many people realize.
He says that a third of all studies funded by cancer groups are not picked up by scientific search
engines using the word "cancer". "This shows that we're funding incredibly fundamental and
important research, which is often of major importance to other fields of medicine." This is a
theme picked up by Wolf. "Traditionally, scientists see themselves as working only on cancer or
diabetes or neuroscience. But if we learn how to switch on a particular gene it could turn out to
be as important in other fields of medicine. Basic research is rapidly becoming more generic.
Often cancer research charities have to defend their willingness to spend a certain proportion of
their funds on research into basic organisms. But that's the kind of work that Paul Nurse did on
yeast - and he got a Nobel Prize."(Michael Day)
Some believe that UK cancer research funders could do more to support research like
this. "There needs to be more funding in basic research. And for that reason the US, which
spends so much on pure research, remains the real center of excellence,"(Andy Wright
AstraZeneca) But that is not really the case, according to other cancer scientists. It is true that
many of the primary cancer funders such as Cancer Research UK are redirecting their support

towards translational research to speed up treatments from lab to patient, but not at the expense
of basic research, says Nic Jones, the director of the Paterson Institute and the Manchester
Cancer Research Center.
This will have an impact on the kinds of skills researchers will need. Roland Wolf, a
cancer scientist and the director of the Biomedical Research Centre at the University of Dundee
says that in addition to the need for molecular biologists, geneticists and cell biologists in the
next few years, there will be an increasing demand for scientists who have broad interests and
training, because the process of creating new drugs, from basic genetics to clinical trials, will
need research that exceeds many traditional disciplines. Cancer Research UK has put in place a
number of schemes to encourage the researchers it supports to break out of a silo mentality, for
example by training chemists in pathology.
Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer next to lung cancer as the leading
cause of cancer death among women. This year alone, nearly 180,000 women in the U.S. will be
diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, and almost 40,000 will die from it, according to the
American Cancer Society. There are some risk factors that a woman cannot control, such as her
age and race as well as genetics, or family history, but there are also choices she can make to
lower her odds of getting it. Among them, says a new study: steering clear of hormone
replacement therapy, which new research confirms increases a woman's chances of developing
breast cancer.
Researchers at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Oregon
came up with the conclusion that there is a link between breast cancer and the use of menopausal
hormone therapy, particularly estrogen-progestin treatment combinations. Since 1990, "breast
cancer rates dropped in parallel with hormone use just as it rose in parallel to it," says oncologist
Andrew Glass, lead author of the study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Glass and his colleagues reviewed the medical histories of 7,386 women (in the database
of Kaiser Permanente Northwest) diagnosed with invasive breast cancer between 1980 and 2006.
They found that breast cancer incidence rose 25 percent from the early 1980s to the early
1990sa period when an increasing number of women were getting mammograms and also
undergoing hormone therapy to control menopause symptoms and prevent chronic disease. Glass
says that the increase in breast cancer could be the reason so many women are getting
mammograms, because the test can find cancers that might otherwise go undetected until the
disease has progressed.
But Glass notes that mammography rates among women in the Kaiser plan leveled off in
the early 1990s, which provided researchers with a great opportunity to study the link between
breast cancer and hormone therapy use. They discovered that breast cancer incidence had moved
in tandem with hormone use from the early 1990s onward. During the 1990s, the incidence of
breast cancer climbed by about 15 percent, in synchrony with a growing number of women
receiving hormone replacement therapy. Consistent with the national trend, the number of
women in the Kaiser plan taking hormone replacement therapy increased in 2002; from 2003 to
2004, breast cancer incidence grew18 percent then continued on a downward spiral from there.
These patterns were largely limited to women aged 45 years and older, those most likely to use
estrogen to control hot flashes, and to the types of breast cancer that grow when exposed to
hormones.(Bellantine)

Work Cited

Ballantyne, Coco. "Confirmed: A Link Between Breast Cancer and Hormone Therapy."
Scientific American Global RSS. ScientificAmerican, 6 July 2011. Web. 06 Nov. 2014.

Pickrell, John. "Facts and Figures: Cancer." Newscienentists. N.p., 4 Sept. 2011. Web. 6 Nov.
2014.

httDay, Micheal. "UK Cancer Research Renews Itself." - 01 April 2006. Science News, 1 Apr.
2012. Web. 06 Nov. 2014.p://www.scientificamerican.com/article/confirmed-link-breast-cancerhormone-therapy/