Tumor & Cancer Immunology and Pediatric-Oncology

Tumor biology and Carcinogenesis

Tumors grow in a series of steps. The first step is hyperplasia, meaning that there are too many cells resulting from uncontrolled cell division. These cells appear normal, but changes have occurred that result in some loss of control of growth. The second step is dysplasia, resulting from further growth, accompanied by abnormal changes to the cells. The third step requires additional changes, which result in cells that are even more abnormal and can now spread over a wider area of tissue.  Tumorigenesis depends on carcinogenesis, but not vice versa, and when we focus on carcinogenesis, our scope rests predominantly with mutation or epimutation acquisition, while when we focus on tumorigenesis, our scope is on the multistep progress of mutated cells in tumor development.