Cancer Classification at the Crossroads

Abstract

Internationally accepted classifications of malignant tumors, developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), are based on the histotype, site of origin, morphologic grade, and spread of cancer throughout the body. The WHO classifications are the foundation of cancer diagnosis and the starting point for cancer management. Starting in 2000, the WHO classifications began to include biologic and molecular–genetic features. These developments are having a strong impact on cancer diagnosis and treatment, and this impact is amplifying, given the advances in cancer genomics. Molecular–genetic profiling can be used to refine existing classifications of tumors and, for a small but increasing number of cancers, even determine the treatment irrespective of histotype. Here I discuss how cancer classifications may change in the era of cancer genomics.

Stress Granules Involved in Formation, Progression and Metastasis of Cancer: A Scoping Review

“…(B) Among the types of studies, cell culture studies were more frequent, followed by cell culture, animal study, and human samples studies with the highest number with 12.5% in study design. carcinoma, sarcoma, melanoma, lymphoma, and leukemia (Carbone, 2020). Tumors caused by cancer can be divided into two categories based on their characteristics: malignant or benign (Kalkat et al, 2017).…”

Recent Progress in Phthalocyanine-Polymeric Nanoparticle Delivery Systems for Cancer Photodynamic Therapy

“…Cancer is a genetic disease caused by changes in genes that control the way cells function, particularly how they grow and divide. The origins of the genetic changes that cause cancer could, e.g., be (1) inherited from parents, (2) increased during a person’s lifetime as a result of errors that occur during cell division, or (3) caused by damage to DNA from environmental exposure (e.g., chemicals in tobacco smoke, ultraviolet rays from the sun) [ 3 ].…”

“…Tumors are traditionally classified in four ways: (1) by broad classification (e.g., by tissue, organ, and system), (2) by specific type, (3) by grade, according to WHO classifications, and (4) by spread, according to the Tumor Node Metastasis system [ 3 ]. In the broad tumor classifications two main categories of cancers can be distinguished: (a) hematologic cancers or blood cancers, which include leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma (cancers of the blood cells), and (b) solid tumor cancers, which are cancers of any of the other body parts, e.g., breast, prostate, lung, and colorectal cancers.…”

CRISPR Cas/Exosome Based Diagnostics: Future of Early Cancer Detection

“…The uncontrolled growth of cells when occur in a solid tissue such as in an organ or muscle are termed as tumors. All tumors not necessarily be cancerous, the tumors are further classified into benign tumors, which are noncancerous, devoid of spreading and malignant tumors, which are the cancerous ones that have the potential to spread to a distant organ via blood stream [7]. Cancer cells are known to invade adjoining parts of the body and spread to other organs to form the secondary tumor and this process is termed as metastasis, the primary cause of death from cancer.…”

“…While Stage III is characterized with locally advanced cancer, late stages with the combination T1-T4, N1-N3, M0, here the cancer would have been progressed with respect to the size of the tumor as well as it would have been spread to the adjacent lymph nodes. The stage IV is considered as the most severe stage, which is metastatic cancer with the combination, T1-T4, N1-N3, M1 [7,[10][11][12]. It is reported by that the above staging system is associated with severity of the disease and the survival rate of the patients, which is indirectly proportional i. e., higher the cancer stage so will be the severity of the disease and lesser will be the survival rate.…”