Dr Robin Cotton discusses how cancer is related to DNA

Student:
How is cancer related to cells?

Robin:
Many cancers are caused by changes in the DNA that aren't things that you would want to happen.

Lucy:
Right.

Robin:
So it's a change in the DNA that causes this control of the cell to stop. Your cells only need to divide at certain times. So your skin cells divide a lot because you're growing new skin all the time but your liver cells shouldn't be dividing. They just sort of stay put.

And so when a cell gets out of control it starts to divide, over and over and over again, in a non-controlled way that's bad, and that happens during cancer and it happens because there's changes in the DNA and those changes affect the control of how the cell divides and it gets out of control gradually more and more during the progression of the cancer.