• Question: Was cancer just one type one Of disease long ago and if so has multiplied into different types over time

    Asked by anon-331198 on 29 Jun 2022.
    • Photo: Rachel Harris

      Rachel Harris answered on 22 Jun 2022:

      That’s an interesting question. I think when cancer was first diagnosed it would have only been diagnosed as cancer if it looked like an abnormal growth growing in the wrong place. Previously, because surgery was so dangerous and there were no scans to see cancer, most cancers would have gone undiagnosed, or maybe incorrectly diagnosed. So for example I think it would be hard to diagnose leukemia as cancer because there wouldn’t be an abnormal growth to be seen.

      I think it’d be fairly accurate to say that cancer itself has not changed but our understanding of it has. As surgery became safer we could remove abnormal growths without the risk of infection or the pain for patients. Because of this, doctors could take them out and look at them under the microscope and figure out what they were, and we could start to diagnose different cancers depending on the cell type from which the cancer was derived, which would influence the likelihood of survival. Much later on in the 20th century, we started to figure out that cancers were driven by genetic mutations, and so now it’s becoming more and more common the have cancer molecularly characterized when it’s diagnosed because treatments are becoming more specific to the “driver” mutations.

      This is a very long-winded explanation, but if you’re interested I really recommend the book “the emperor of all maladies”

    • Photo: Jocelyn Bisson

      Jocelyn Bisson answered on 22 Jun 2022:

      Cancer has existed for a very long time. It has probably always been multiple different types. Cancer happens when a cell in the body gets mutations in its genes. Depending on the cell affected a different type of cancer can form.

    • Photo: Zahra Massoud

      Zahra Massoud answered on 22 Jun 2022:

      No – cancer has always been a general term for over 200 different diseases. The disease is really different depending on where in the body it starts, and the changes (mutations) in the DNA that have caused it.

      In the past, when we understood less about cancer, people didn’t know there were so many types of cancer. So rather than the disease itself “multiplying” over time, we have found better ways to classify it meaning there are now more “known” types!

    • Photo: Karin Purshouse

      Karin Purshouse answered on 22 Jun 2022:

      I think everyone has given great answers, so I’d only add that I think the way we think about cancer is going to continue changing. We still think of cancers as being of a certain place – breast cancer, lung cancer etc. I think in the future cancers might be categorised by their biology – e.g. hormone driven, or immune system driven, and their site might become less relevant?

      Let’s watch this space!

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