It has long been thought that cancer was a slow but inevitable accumulation towards a critical mass. That being, when the growth becomes so expedient it starts to damage the body around it. Treatments are aimed at preventing this accumulation, halting it and even reversing it.
Cancerous tissue is amazing stuff, it mutates much quicker than general bodily tissues. When the mutations happen in the wrong way they cause the cancer to spread much more quickly or metastasize to other parts of the body (spread). What has recently been discovered is that, though mutations can cause a cancer’s growth to speed up it can also cause it to slow down or even reverse course. If you think of mutation as random then you can see why this might be possible and the amount of miraculous recoveries of certain cancer patients certainly backs it up.
The genome of cancer cells is split into two groups, drivers and passengers. Drivers are what spur the cancer towards growth and with enough of these in the genome the cancer cells will replicate much more quickly. Passengers make up the bulk of the genome and generally do very little; they’re not responsible for a cancer’s growth. Mutations in the drivers will make a cancer more dangerous but the right mutations in the right number of passengers can cause the opposite to happen.
Standard cancer treatments tend to focus on the drivers but with this new discovery it might be possible to focus treatment on the passengers instead. If doctors could cause the right build up for the right kinds of passengers they might be able to create a viable way to halt cancer in its tracks and even cause it to go into total remission! Keep your eyes peeled for more on this one as it develops!
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