(August 2003) Cancer: A Familiar Name, but What Does it Mean? Cancer refers to the hyperproliferation of cells that have lost the ability to be controlled by normal cell signals. Cancer cells have the ability to proliferate independent of their environment and are capable of metastasizing, or colonizing other tissues in the body. There are three basic characteristics of early cancer cells. The first is that they have lost the ability to undergo apoptosis, or programmed cell death. Cells that have suffered irreparable DNA damage activate specific proteases and nucleases that destroy the proteins and DNA of the cell, thereby…

(August 2003) In the beginning, there were chickens Surprisingly enough, our understanding of tumour formation has its roots not in humans, but in the chicken. For the past century it has been known that viruses can be causative agents of cancer. Cancer-causing elements were first described in viruses infecting poultry in 1909 [1]. Later, it was shown that the injection of these viruses was sufficient for tumour formation. But the molecular basis of cancer was unearthed only with the discovery of cellular homologues to these cancer-causing elements in 1976 [1]. When the viral DNA sequences were isolated and characterized they…