AP+Cancer+Article+Questions

1.The article begins by mentioning two important people with cancer. Who is Elizabeth Edwards? Who is Tony Snow? (Include their politcal party, job, and current health status-this article was written in April-your answer should have more than what you can find in the article)
 * Elizabeth Edwards is a democratic who worked as a law clerk for a federal judge. Doctors found that she has more cancer in her body. She has a lump in her breast and has a tumor on her hip bone. She can be treated for it but it can't be cured.
 * Tony Snow is a republican who was a broadcaster and newspaper columnist. He has colon cancer and got it removed but then it came back cancerous and metastasize.

2. What is a metastatic cancer cell?
 * Is a primary tumor. The colonist cells, taking all the nutrients in their adapted organ and starving their norma neighbors of air, sugar, and salts, blocking air passage ways and clogging conduits. When they cant take no more the tear open the surrounding cells and eat the skin off your bones.

3. Why does the author call cancer cells barbarians and cannibals?
 * Because they eat everything in sight and eat all the skin off your bones. They also dont allow any other cells to get the things they want such as nutrients.

4. What do we know about the events that transform a normal cell to a cancer cell?
 * The cell starts to divide and thinks that it is being stimulated by growth hormones and doesnt stop growing

5. Why is harder to study metastatic cancer cells?
 * Because they are always moving and go into our blood cells.

6. How many cells do primary tumors shed each day (in a rodent)? Yet how many metastatic tumors do these rodents have?
 * About a million cells shed primary tumors a day. Metastatic tumors are visible metastases and can be counted using your fingers.

7. Describe two ways metastatic cells can travel through the body avoiding detection from our immune system.
 * One way a metastatic cell can travel through the body is to make themselves into a parasite by sliming down to bacterial dimensions by pinching off of their cytoplasm.
 * Another way a metastatic cells can travel through the body is "hitchhiking" on a red blood cells that goes into the safe pools within the tissue.

8. Where is the first site (oasis for the cancer cell) that metastasis generally occurs? Why? Why is it an oasis? (What is an oasis?)
 * The first sight that metastasis generally occurs is in the virgin terrain feeding on the growth of hormones and factors that wnd sites typically seem.
 * An oasis might be a wound sight where chaperon platelets handily stick.

9. What is a dormant micrometastasis? Why are they relevant to human health?
 * A dormant micrometastasis is when the cell adapt to their surroundings and interact with their neighbors enough to exploit them.
 * They are relevant to human health because it helps to explain the different types of primary tumors and why thye have preferred organs.

10. What evidence do we have that metastasis occurs in organs that are similar to the organ of the primary tumor? Give two examples.
 * One piece of evidence we have is in breast cancer because it metastasis to bone tissue. It talks the calcium ions for breast milk
 * Malignant melanoma spreads readily to the brain, presumably because neural tissue and the melanocytes that give rise to melanoma both arise from the same class of cells during gestation.