Here’s a neat infographic from Cancer Research UK summarizing a new Cell report from UK researchers that describes how conditions build to trigger cancer. This information would help to explain the greater vulnerability of certain organs to tumors compared to others.
The team, headed by Richard James Gilbertson, demonstrated that while cells may start with equal carcinogenic risk, tumor incidence correlates with their capacities to divide over their lifetimes. The researchers were also able to activate cancer by damaging liver stem cells to show how this intrinsic capacity is also influenced by extrinsic factors. They refer to this as the “‘perfect storm’ that ultimately determines organ cancer risk.”
Almost there!
Featured Image: cigarettes (CC2.0, chris vaughan/Flickr)
Journal Reference:
Liqin Zhu, David Finkelstein, Culian Gao, Lei Shi, Yongdong Wang, Dolores López-Terrada, Kasper Wang, Sarah Utley, Stanley Pounds, Geoffrey Neale, David Ellison, Arzu Onar-Thomas, Richard James Gilbertson. Multi-organ Mapping of Cancer Risk. Cell, 2016; 166 (5): 1132 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2016.07.045