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Flower How Cancer Grows and Spreads

images from interactive feature
Go to Children's interactive
How Cancer Grows and Spreads.
In some ways, a cancer is like a cross-town trip -- there's a starting point and a destination, and there are many possible routes that you could take to get to your destination. With cancer, the starting point is a single tumor cell; the destination, if the tumor's progression isn't halted along the way, is metastasis and organ failure. Likewise, there are many routes that a cancer can take, and the progression of the disease is not always direct.

This animated Flash presentation illustrates the growth, progression and metastasis of carcinomas, the type of cancer that accounts for more than 90% of all cancer cases. Using the presentation's "roadmap," you'll be able to choose your own route as you travel from one possible cancer stage to the next. At each stage you'll be able to find out about the latest research advances and current treatments.

  How Cancer Grows and Spreads [140 K]
An interactive, animated presentation that shows how cancer progresses through the 14 stages of a typical cancer.
Requires Flash plugin.


printable map Cancer Map
Here's a downloadable, printable version of the map presented in the interactive feature.
Download the map... [PDF, 196 K]

Cancer Research at Children's Hospital Boston
For more than 50 years, physicians and scientists from Children's Hospital Boston have taken the lead in radically improving survival rates for pediatric cancer. Since the 1940s, when Children's physician-scientist Sidney Farber, MD, pioneered modern chemotherapy and achieved the first successful remission of acute leukemia, the overall survival rate for childhood cancers has risen to 75 percent.
Cancer Care at Children's Hospital Boston
Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Care (DF/CHCC) represents the nearly 60-year-old partnership between Children's Hospital Boston and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute that delivers comprehensive care to children with and survivors of all types of childhood cancers. DF/CHCC, the largest pediatric cancer program in New England and one of the most active in the country, treats more than 2,000 children and adolescents each year.
More about the program...

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Credits: How Cancer Grows and Spreads
Subject Matter Experts:   Bruce Zetter, PhD
Marsha Moses, PhD
Producer/Writer: Rick Groleau
Design: Peggy Recinos
Illustration/Animation: Trevor Piecham
Developed by Children's Hospital Boston Information Services Department
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