Cancer/ Stem Cells

Question 1

What are the two types of tumours? How do they differ? Affects?

Answer 1

Benign and malignant/cancerous.

1. Benign tumours don’t directly hurt surrounding cells or tissue (only can crowd tissue)
2. don’t grow as fast
3. Don’t metastasize
4. Malignant tumours are cancerous, which are cells with a copying defect causing them to mitosis faster and skipping over interphase
5. This causes crowding in the area
6. Cancer cells release an enzyme which can damage surrounding cells
7. Do to their fast replication they can metastasize to vital organs, and impair their function due to crowding or impairing blood flow by getting into blood

Question 2

What is it called when cancer cells replicate and move to a new place in the body

Answer 2

Metastasis (metastasize).

Question 3

What are the two types of stem cells?

Answer 3

Embryonic (undifferentiated) and adult (partly differentiated).

Question 4

How do stem cells help people?

Answer 4

Injection of certain stem cells can help replenish damaged cells. This could help in a chemotherapy patient, someone with low platelets, or any other person with not enough of a certain cell type.

Question 5

How are stem cells harvested.

Answer 5

Adult stem cells are often taken from bone marrow which are perfect for replenishing blood cells such as RBC, WBC, or platelets. Embryonic stem cells can be harvested from developing embryos.