Metastasis and drug resistance
- Amy Xie
- Feb 14, 2021
- 1 min read
Metastasis is the process by which cancer cells separate from the tumor in which they originated and move to another part of the body through the bloodstream. The larger a tumor is the higher the chance that metastasis will occur which is why the curability of cancer is partially dependent on the size of the original tumor. Once metastasis occurs, treatment of the cancer becomes extremely difficult, which is why it’s the primary cause of death in cancer patients as the cells may migrate to vital organs such as the lungs. On a side note, when these cancer cells relocate they still retain their original name. For example, if lung cancer cells move to the bones it’s called metastatic lung cancer not bone cancer.
Besides metastasis, the development of drug resistance in cancer cells also makes the disease hard to treat. Similar to infectious diseases, cancer is also quick to develop an immunity to the treatments used against it. The first attempt to solve this problem was the use of chemotherapy, which initially worked wonders. However, after several decades, the results slowly started to diminish and it became clear that other treatments were needed. While the use of chemotherapy has not stopped, other procedures are used as well such as radiation therapy and immunotherapy. Additionally, the presence of drug resistance genes in the cancer cells is correlated with the size of the tumor and well as its mutation rate. That’s because there’s a greater number of cells in larger tumors, and thus mitosis occurs more rapidly than it would in a smaller tumor.
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