A tumor is a growing mass of abnormal cells. What must happen ...

Question

A tumor is a growing mass of abnormal cells. What must happen for a benign tumor to become malignant?

Accepted Answer

Welcome back, everybody. Let's look at our next question. It says which of the following malignant cancers can develop from a benign adenoma, twist A breast cancer, B, colon cancer, C, thyroid cancer or D all of the above. Well, let's think about this. Recalling that we do have that choice D all of the above. So there's a potential that all of our answers fall into this category. Probably the most well known cancer. When we think of benign adenomas developing into malignant cancer is choice B colon cancer. I'm just going to put a dot here rather than selecting it right away. Since I do have that choice. D possibility colon cancer often starts with benign polyps that because it's so common for it to go along this pathway are considered precancerous. So in colon cancer, you often start, you start with normal endothelial tissue in the colon that can begin abnormal growth to form a polyp. Often as a result of a gene mutation in the A PC gene, these cells within the polyp can then can undergo further genetic changes, often involving the Kras gene that causes the formation of larger adenomas which can then become carcinomas and become metastatic colon cancer. This is such a common pathway that that's why colonoscopy is considered such a valuable preventative technique when it comes to colon cancer. Because if you spot these polyps in the colon, they can be removed before they have the chance to go down this pathway to malignant cancer. So let's look at our other chance answer choices since we do have the potential of more than one correct answer. Uh When we consider breast cancer, uh you can have benign fibrous adenomas in the breast. But it's very uncommon for these to become cancer. That that is a possibility but only in a very small percent of cases. So you wouldn't really consider that as a malignant cancer that you commonly think of developing from a benign adenoma because usually those uh fibrous adenomas in the breast do not become cancer. So we're going to eliminate choice a and therefore consider choice d as not our answer since we have crossed out one of our answers and finally, choice C thyroid cancer in the interest of being thorough uh thyroid cancer. Again, you can have benign adenomas of the thyroid. Um But these adenomas are unlikely to become malignant. So just like breast cancer, we can eliminate and that, that's not the usual pathway for developing malignant breast or thyroid cancer. It doesn't usually start with a benign adenoma in those cases. So our answer here for which of the following malignant cancers can develop from a benign Anoma and that would be choice B colon cancer. See you in the next video.

A tumor is a growing mass of abnormal cells. What must happen for a benign tumor to become malignant?

Key Concepts

Benign vs. Malignant Tumors

Genetic Mutations and Cellular Transformation

Metastasis and Invasion Mechanisms

Watch next