Question

What cellular process causes a cell to become cancerous? List three possible causes for cancer.

Answer 1

The classical definition of a cancerous - or "transformed" - cell is uncontrolled cell proliferation. The cell loses control over cell division and the cell starts dividing and replicating itself uncontrollably. So think of three processes that have to do with controlling cell division and you have a pretty good understanding of this classical model.

For the sake of scientific currentness, some people who specialise cancer genomics think that it is subtler - they point to the quite low rates of cell division in solid body tumors and various patterns in regulatory pathways active in cancer cells as evidence that cell division in cancer cells is actually regulated, just regulated in different ways than normal, untransformed healthy cells.