Featured Science and Innovations

How Cancer Grows and Spreads

In some ways, a cancer is like a cross-town trip -- there's a starting point and a destination, and there are many possible routes that you could take to get to your destination. With cancer, the starting point is a single tumor cell; the destination, if the tumor's progression isn't halted along the way, is metastasis and organ failure. Likewise, there are many routes that a cancer can take, and the progression of the disease is not always direct.

This animated Flash presentation illustrates the growth, progression and metastasis of carcinomas, the type of cancer that accounts for more than 90% of all cancer cases. Using the presentation's "roadmap," you'll be able to choose your own route as you travel from one possible cancer stage to the next. At each stage you'll be able to find out about the latest research advances and current treatments.

How Cancer Grows and Spreads [140 K]
An interactive, animated presentation that shows how cancer progresses through the 14 stages of a typical cancer.
Requires Flash plugin.

Cancer Map
Here's a downloadable, printable version of the map presented in the interactive feature.
Download the map... [PDF, 196 K]

Cancer Research at Children's Hospital Boston

For more than 50 years, physicians and scientists from Children's Hospital Boston have taken the lead in radically improving survival rates for pediatric cancer. Since the 1940s, when Children's physician-scientist Sidney Farber, MD, pioneered modern chemotherapy and achieved the first successful remission of acute leukemia, the overall survival rate for childhood cancers has risen to 75 percent.

Cancer Care at Children's Hospital Boston

Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Care (DF/CHCC) represents the nearly 60-year-old partnership between Children's Hospital Boston and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute that delivers comprehensive care to children with and survivors of all types of childhood cancers. DF/CHCC, the largest pediatric cancer program in New England and one of the most active in the country, treats more than 2,000 children and adolescents each year.

More about the program...

Related Links

• Vascular Biology Program at Children's Hospital Boston
  Dedicated to the study of abnormal cell growth, a condition that affects virtually all cancers. Chaired by Judah Folkman, MD.
• Tumor metastasis
  A description from the laboratory Web site of Bruce Zetter, PhD
• A dipstick test for breast cancer?
  Researcher Marsha Moses has found a way to diagnose cancer using urine samples.
• Rising star
  From miracle drug to disappointment and back again. The strange-but-true story of endostatin.
• Video interview with Judah Folkman, MD
  Dr. Judah Folkman, director of Children's Program in Vascular Biology, originated the groundbreaking idea that angiogenesis is also central to the development and growth of tumors.
• Ingber's Egg Analogy
  In this Flash presentation, Don Ingber, MD, PhD, uses eggs in a carton to illustrate how cells in our tissues behave during wound healing and tumor formation.

Credits: How Cancer Grows and Spreads