How Mutations Drive Cancer Growth

Cancer develops when mutations change the genes that control the cell cycle and let healthy cells keep dividing. A cancer can begin from a single mutation in one starting cell. As that cell line keeps growing, it can collect more mutations and eventually become malignant.

One example is chronic m...

Every cancer phenotype starts as a single mutation event in one of its ancestor cells. During the subsequent cell division cycles, the daughter cells develop additional mutations to gain oncogenicity.

There are over 570 genes that are frequently mutated in cancer, and the majority of them are somatic mutations. That means that such mutati...