Lucycancer+Angier

> 1. It is hader to study metastatic cancer cells because they are very hard to see. they aren't visible all the time. If we were to look at some, we might only be able to count the visible ones on the fingers of one hand. 7. Describe two ways metastatic cells can travel through the body avoiding detection from our immune system. 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?) 9. What is a dormant micrometastasis? Why are they relevant to human health? A dormant micromatastasis is when the malignant cells die out. Humans can have millions of these malignant cells without suffering from this disease. When the cells interact with their neighbors and adopt to their new surroundsing do they become alive again. This helps explain why different types of primary tumors tend to metastasize to their "preferred" organs.
 * 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)
 * 2) Elizabeth Edwards, 57, who is married to the presidential candidate John Edwards announced that her cancer was back. Not only did she announce that, but also Tony Snow, 51, who is the press secretary for President Bush, announced that his previously treated cancer had reutened an metastasized as well. In Elizabeth's case, the cancer was spreading from the breast to the bone and In his, from his colon to his liver. They are not giving up. They "Both vowed to fight their resurgent disease, and given the possible treatments now available, they could well have years more of productive, if sometimes rough-edged, life before them."
 * 3) What is a metastatic cancer cell?
 * 4) Metastatic Cancer cells are malignant cellular outpost proliferating far from the neoplastic mass that spawned them.
 * 5) Why does the author call cancer cells barbarians and cannibals?
 * 6) The cells are called barbarians and cannibals because they hog all the nutrients on their adopted organ and starving their normal neighbors of air, sugar and salts. They also are blocking the traffic and clogging conduits. These cells are greedy. They are tearing open surrounding cells.
 * 7) What do we know about the events that transform a normal cell to a cancer cell?
 * 8) We know that the genetic mutations and chromosomals aberrations prompt the cells to think that they are being stimulates by growth hormones when they are not.
 * 9) Why is harder to study metastatic cancer cells?
 * 1) How many cells do primary tumors shed each day (in a rodent)? Yet how many metastatic tumors do these rodents have?
 * 2) The primary tumors in a rodent shed a million cells each day. yet the rodent only has a handfull of visible metastatic tumors.
 * 1) A metastatic cell slim down to almost bacterial dimensions by pinching off unnecessary hanks of thie cytoplasm. They can also attach themselves to the red blood surface and be 'escorted through the rapids into safe pools within tissues."
 * 1) An oasis could be wound sites to which the chaperone platelets hardily stick. It allows cancer cells to enter unknown "virgin" territory and to begin feeing on hormones and factors with which wound sites typically teem.

10. What evidence do we have that metastasis occurs in organs that are similar to the organ of the primary tumor? Give two examples. Melignant lemanoma spreads readily to the brain, presumably because neutral tissue and the melanocytes that gice rise to melanoma both arise from the same class of cells during gestation. Breast tumors are know to metastasize to bone tissue, where the invasive cells perversely take advantage of their ability to rich bone.