Question: What is a cancer cell made of?

Karen Reed answered on 19 Jun 2012:

Hiay – good question – on its own to look at it under the microscope it doesn’t look that different to any other cell. Its how it behaves that makes it different. Cancer cells come from normal cells that have lots the normal controls on growth. We need to make new cells all the time at a stagering rate – something like 300 million new red blood cells a minute. But at the same time the process of making new cells is tightly controled so you only make them when and where you need them. Cancer cells loose this control so start to grow when and where they are not needed.
Having said on its own the cancer cell doesn’t look any different to a normal cell – as a group of cells its easy to tell them apart – I’ll try and post a picture for you from my work of normal and cancer cells
Hope that helps