IT’S A WORD no one wants to hear for themselves or someone they love – cancer. It’s so scary that some people instead call it “the C-word.” Here’s how it forms — and how your body works to keep things in check.
Cancer can start from many types of mutations. It also can occur in different types of cells and anywhere in the body. Some cancers form a solid mass known as a tumor. But not all tumors are cancers. Some are just lumps, where cells divided too much but did not spread. Common solid cancers include breast cancer, skin cancer and lung cancer.
Other cancers affect the blood. These can form in bone marrow, which produces blood cells. They also can form in immune organs and lymph. Blood cancers include leukemia and lymphoma.
Although cancers are most common in adults, children can get them, too. For kids under age 14, the most common types of cancer are leukemia and lymphoma. Less common types include cancers in the brain, spinal cord and other nerve tissues.
There are many ways to treat cancer. Some early-stage, solid-tumor cancers can be cut out with surgery.
Chemotherapy uses drugs to kill cancer cells or to shrink a tumor. The types of drugs used will depend on the cancer. Other drugs may try to harm cancer cells indirectly. For example, some tumors rely on hormones to grow. For these cancers, doctors might use medicines that stop the body from making or using those hormones.
Doctors might have several different ways to treat a patient’s cancer. But many of those treatments can attack healthy cells, too. So healthy cells that divide a lot may also die (allowing a patient’s hair to fall out).
Some cancers are sensitive to heat or light. Doctors can heat these types of cells with radio waves, lasers or ultrasound. Photodynamic therapy uses a drug to make cancer cells super-sensitive to light. Then doctors can shine a laser or other light source on them to kill those cells.
Radiation can also treat cancer. Focused beams of high-energy radiation can kill cancer cells by breaking down their DNA.
Patients with blood cancers may get chemotherapy or radiation to destroy diseased bone marrow. Doctors then infuse marrow from a volunteer so that patients can make healthy new blood cells again. This is called a stem-cell transplant.
Other times, doctors use the patient’s own immune system to fight cancer. Immunotherapy drugs aim to boost the body’s natural immunity. Or these drugs may chemically tag tumors to help the patient’s immune system find and destroy them.
Cancer treatment often has unpleasant side effects. Patients may feel tired or sick to their stomach. That’s because treating a cancer means killing cells — and many of those that get hit may have been healthy ones. That’s especially true for healthy cells that are dividing, such as those lining the stomach, immune cells and hair cells. Anyway, scientists and doctors are always looking for new ways to treat cancers. By Manny Palomar, PhD (EV Mail JULY 14-20, 2025 Issue)
