Question: how do cancer cells multiply??????????????????????????????????????????????

Matthew Kitching answered on 10 Nov 2016:

Hola Im a scientist not!

Thats an interesting question – cancer cells use the same way to multiple as your normal cells – but they vary in one key way: Cancer cells are immortal!

Yeah – i know right? cancer cells can actually live forever! (if they are kept in the right way). So how does this work? well your normal cells have two systems to keep them in check. the first system tells them when they are allowed to divide. There are a bunch of chemicals that act like checkpoints on a highway – stopping the cells division from progressing until everything is ready for the next step. Its called the checkpoint signalling pathway, and its super important fro controlling cell division (someone got a noble prize for discovering it). The second system is programmed cell death – called apoptosis – and it tells cells that are damaged or not needed anymore to die in an organised way. In cancer cells this system is broken so the cell keeps growing and dividing.

It turns out that because cancer cells live forever, we can actually use them to study how normal cells work. There is a type of cell (we call them cell lines) called HeLa cells – and they are used a lot to study human tissues. This type of cell is called a HeLa cell after a lady called Henrietta Lacks, a lady who died of cancer in 1951 – but doctors took a sample of her cancer cells and now her cells are all over the world helping study 100’s of different ways to cure cancer!

Hope this answers your question – let me know if you want to know more 🙂