• Question: what does cancer look like?

    Asked by kinleyjade to Amar, Ana, Andrea, Leah, Matt on 11 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by samking.
    • Photo: Anastasia Wass

      Anastasia Wass answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      cancers just a mass of cells so from the outside alot of tumours just look like lumps.
      What a tumour looks like when you cut it open depends on where the tumour is and whether its benign or malignant. Malignant tumours often look really weird as they tend to mutate their appearance. Benign tumours tend to look like balls of whatever cell the cancers made of.

    • Photo: Matthew Lam

      Matthew Lam answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      Tumours tend to look like a lump of tissue.

      But if you cut a slice of a tumour and look at it under a microscope you can see lots of different features on different types of cancer. It depends what type of cell the tumour has originated from and where the tumour has been taken from. You will also notice normal and healthy cells mingled in amongst the cancer cells because tumours create their own little environments which help them to grow. In fact, the normal cells in and around the cancer cells actually encourage the tumour to grow and help the cancer cells spread around the body where they can form other tumours.

    • Photo: Andrea Hanvey

      Andrea Hanvey answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      As a scientist in a histopathology laboratory in a hospital i see Biopsies looking for cancer, and tumour specimens every day at work.

      I will describe to you a breast tumour. Firstly if a breast lump is found, the patient will have a needle core biopsy. This is a biopsy taken with a large needle and the biopsy is a cylinder of tissue often 1cm in length by 2mm in diameter . Biopsys with tumours in tend to be white and quite firm. Breast tissue is very fatty so biopsies that are not cancer tend to be soft yellow fat.

      If a biopsy is diagnosed as cancer the patient will go on to have the tumour removed either by having the breast removed or a large lump of tissues removed with the tumour in called a wide local excision.

      Upon opening the specimen a tumour in the breast usually looks like a firm white lump. When the tissue is processed and sections cut onto slides and stained the cells are examined down the microscope. All slides a are first stained with a H&E haematoxilyn and eosin stain. This stains cell nuclei purple and cytoplasm pink. Cancer cells tend to have very little cytoplasm. If you look on my profile page the last picture is a H&E of what breast cancer cells look like down the microscope.

    • Photo: Leah Fitzsimmons

      Leah Fitzsimmons answered on 12 Mar 2014:

      For some videos about cancer and how doctors can spot it try looking here:
      http://www.exploratorium.edu/imaging-station/research/cancer/story_.

      Or for a picture of lung cancer cells inside the body try:
      http://scribol.com/science/15-beautiful-microscopic-images-from-inside-the-human-body/10
      This link should go straight to a picture of lung cancer cells taken using an extremely high powered microscope which can see tiny details but can only take black and white images. The colours are added afterwards to help make the picture easier to understand.

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