Gastrointestinal Cancer Flashcards
What are the hallmarks of cancer?
- evasion of apoptosis
- self-sufficiency in growth signals
- insensitivity to anti-growth signals
- tissue evasion and metastasis
- limitless replicative potentila
- sustained angiogenesis
What are the two types of oesophageal caner?
- SCC (squamous cell cancer)
- ADC (adenocarcinoma)
What are the risks factors of oesophageal adenocarcinoma?
- gender (male)
- age (old)
- LOS relaxing drugs
- obesity
- H-pylori (less likely to have it-less juices)
- fruit and veg (protective)
- anti-oxidants (protective)
What does the H.pylori do?
stops the stomach from making acid and causes inflammation
How do you get hereditary diffuse-type gastric carcinoma?
due to genetic mutations in E-cadherin (found in adherins junctions)
Why is it bad if a tumour is E-cadherin negative?
tumour cells are more motile so can metastasise more easily
What other factors can cause E-cadherin repression?
- epigenetic events
- promoter hypermethylation
- EMT regulators
What does EMT stand for?
epithelial mesenchymal transcriptional factors
What is colorectal cancer linked to?
Western lifestyle
How can you prevent colon cancer?
By a change in lifestyle (40% of people could survive if they did this)
What are the risk factors for colon cancer?
- meat (red and processed)
- obesity
- low levels of physical activity
- alcohol
What can reduce the risk of colon cancer?
- regular use of aspirin
- high levels of exercise
- fibrous diet
- eating fish
What are the types of colorectal cancer?
- sporadic
- familial (FAP and HNPCC)
What does FAP stand for?
familial adenomatous polyposis coli
How do you treat FAP?
prophylactic surgery
What causes FAP?
mutated APC gene on chromosome 5q21
How does a mutation in APC cause FAP?
-A mutation in APC means that beta-catenin can’t be removed meaning it can go into the nucleus and induce oncogenes
How does the national bowel cancer screening programme improve the 5 year survival rate
- aims to identify asymptomatic individuals with potentially curable disease
- helps increase survival rate by attempting to diagnose earlier
