Cancer on the other hands as we have established earlier, is an uncontrolled abnormal growth of cells.

They are generally cells that are independent of any regulatory mechanism in the system. Both HIV and cancer funny enough share some similarities and one of which is that they could be both highly invasive.

The invasiveness of a pathogen makes it much more dangerous because, they will continue to attack healthy and normal cells until they have full dominance over the host.

A close look at the picture above in the last row, tells us that the cells is changing in conformation into a star like shape with spikes, typical of metastatic tumours. They burst later and spread to neighbouring cells.

Recent research has shown that the water content of a tumour determines the invasiveness of the cancer cell. The cells that are more stiffer and with less water content , tend not to burst and invade other cells unlike when its exterior ends are soft and filled with much water content.

Could this be a way out or be used as a bench mark to determine the invasiveness of a cancerous growth?

Metastatic capability of cancers cells.

Cancerous cells have a unique attribute of metastasizing (the ability to spread, move and invade other healthy cells.

Unlike the HIV, cancerous cells do not necessarily need to take take over the genetic machinery of a heathy cell, rather because of their hyper proliferation (rapid and fast multiplication), they displace healthy cells.

They also deprive healthy cells necessary nutrients required for proper functioning thus leading to death.

A classical and simple example is breast cancer. About 80% of breath cancers are highly invasive and metastasizes.

The gif below shows a cancerous cells at its late stage ready to burst and spread to surrounding cells. A typical characteristic of an invasive cancerous cell.

Another reason for their easy invasiveness is the abundance of lymph nodes around the chest region when related to breast cancer.

This lymph nodes enable and facilitates to easy spread of cancers. Another typical example is cervical cancer. The abundance of lymph nodes plays a critical role in the spread of cancerous cells in the cervix.

It's very obvious that lymph node as very significant role to play in neoplasia (new growth).

If you would recall, in the discussion about HIV, lymph node also play an important role in their replication at the early stage of infection. It's obvious that both HIV and cancerous cells have special interest in lymph node.

Another unique feature about cancerous cell is Angiogenesis (development of new blood vessels). Cancer cells are well known to posses the ability of producing blood vessels in a bid to compensate or supplement their hyper activity.

The more blood vessels are produced, the more nutrients they assimilate for growth. This goes to say that, cancerous cells are not so entirely dependent as they could help themselves. Unlike HIV that solely depends on viability of other cells like the CD4, cancerous cells need not rely on others cells for replication.

The replication of cancer cells is so independent because they bypass regulatory checkpoints. Chemotherapies are aimed at totally eliminating cancerous cells but this also comes with some negative effects as most chemotherapeutic treatment cannot differentiate between healthy and an unhealthy cell.

This means that, you cannot kill the cancerous cell without harming healthy cells in one way or the other.

This is another area where cancer poses serious threat. Operation is one of the way to remove cancerous growths provided they are not highly invasive.

For treatment to be successful, most cancers are better detected and removed at their early stages. Failure to do this, death is certain and inevitable.

The hallmark!

In all, it still points to the fact, early detection is the key to survival. Both disease are not human friendly and as such prevetion is better than cure.

Eat healthy, exercise, keep fit, go for breast scan. A tumour that last for more than a week with serious pain is worth examining. Go for check ups.