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Cancer is the name we give to diseases in which cells multiply abnormally, by not following normal cycles of growth and death. In general, normal cells are disciplined and follow instructions, whereas cancer cells grow disproportionately and without following the rules. Cancers arrive when there is a mutation in a single cell. Then that cell divides and there is two and four and so on, as it keeps dividing. These cells attract blood vessels because they need oxygen and they actually invade into the blood vessels. Once they get into the blood vessels, they go to other parts of the body, and they grow in other parts of the body. That's called a metastasis.

There are three most common ways to treat cancer. Surgery; that's where you surgically remove the tumor. Radiation therapy; that's where you treat the tumor with radiation. Then we have drugs that go in the blood and will go wherever the cancer has spread to.

Surgery is used when the cancer hasn't spread anywhere. So when you look around with a CT scan or a PET scan or staging, the cancer is only in the place where it started, such as on the breast, prostate, etc. When cancers are localized, surgery is almost always the treatment of choice. Surgery, when it follows an early diagnosis, can often lead to cure to cancer. This is most likely with skin cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, cervical cancer and testicular cancer. Radiation therapy can shrink tumors and like surgery, can sometimes lead to cure.

Chemotherapy has been used to treat cancer since the 1940s. Chemotherapy works by attacking many types of cells in the body. This often leads to side effects, such as nausea and hair loss. Chemotherapy can shrink a certain proportion of tumors, to prolong the life of a proportion of the patients. Chemotherapy is rarely given to cure. Chemotherapy prolongs the life and then the tumor-related symptoms, disappear or improve because the cancer tumor shrinks.

Research is leading to a growing number of new drugs to fight cancer, based on much better knowledge of how cancer grows.

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