Cancer cell

The nucleus may acquire grooves, folds or indentations, chromatin may aggregate or disperse, and the nucleolus can become enlarged.

Malignant tumors can invade other organs, spread to distant locations (metastasis) and become life-threatening.

[7] However, a lack of particular co-stimulated molecules that aid in the way antigens react with lymphocytes can impair the natural killer cells' function, ultimately leading to cancer.

Although a DNA repair deficiency can predispose a cell lineage to develop cancer, increased (rather than decreased) expression of a repair capability may also emerge in the progression of cancer cell lineages, and this capability may be clinically important as reviewed by Lingg et al.[9] For instance, the DNA repair gene DMC1 encodes a protein that is normally expressed only in cells undergoing meiosis where it helps maintain an undamaged germ-line.

[10] Early evidence of human cancer can be interpreted from Egyptian papers (1538 BCE) and mummified remains.

[11] In 2016, a 1.7 million year old osteosarcoma was reported by Edward John Odes (a doctoral student in Anatomical Sciences from Witwatersrand Medical School, South Africa) and colleagues, representing the oldest documented malignant hominin cancer.

Sir Rudolf Virchow, a German biologist and politician, studied microscopic pathology, and linked his observations to illness.

[13] In 1845, Virchow and John Hughes Bennett independently observed abnormal increase in white blood cells in patients.

Virchow correctly identified the condition as blood disease, and named it leukämie in 1847 (later anglicised to leukemia).