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81 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
If a "mutagen" is a chemical that causes mutations, and a "carcinogen" is a chemical that causes cancer, what would be the most likely relationship between the two?
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a chemical that is a mutagen is very likely to also be a carcinogen
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Deaths from cancer (all cancers put together), has shown what change in the past 6 years?
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A decline of 1-2%
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The 1964 Surgeon General’s report struck a major blow in the war on cancer by declaring
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Cigarette smoking is a major cause of lung cancer
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The second leading cause of death in the United States is ________ right after ________ .
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cancer, heart disease
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For a single cell to become dangerous to the individual, it needs to
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divide inappropriately, and enter a blood vessel so that it can travel to new sites and set up new centers of growth, and learn how to get new blood vessels to grow toward it so that it can acquire the nutrients it needs for growth
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Federal funding for cancer research has __________ the need by qualified researchers to find a cure for the different kinds of cancer
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not kept up with
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Of the following, the most common site of cancer in men is
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prostate
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In general, the “mortality rate” for cancer is __________ in the last decade
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decreasing slowly
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Our recognition of cancer as a distinct type of disease goes back to who?
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Greek “father of medicine” -- Hippocrates
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How do growth control systems contribute to cancer?
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they are normal and essential components of the cellular machinery, and don't easily go bad, but can have disastrous consequences when they go bad
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One reason not all of us get cancer is:
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our cells have safeguard systems that are capable of protecting us even when the growth control systems go bad
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The most common site of cancer in women is
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breast cancer
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Compared to the rest of the population, African-American populations, especially men, tend to have lower or higher rates of dying of cancer?
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higher
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What is the most realistic statement regarding getting cancer?
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Getting cancer is largely a consequence of living such long lives, and would still occur to at least some of us in our old age even in an ideal world of natural foods and clean air
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Which type of cell seems most likely to collect the changes required to allow it to become a cancer cell?
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Cells that divide constantly, such as blood cells
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If you are a nonsmoker, your best chance for reducing your risk of cancer would involve
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Paying attention to your diet and exercise
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In 1900, cancer was #8 in causes of death, yet today it is #2. Why?
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The major causes of death in 1900 have been largely eliminated due to better drinking water, sanitation, and health care, so now people live long enough to get cancer.
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The difference between a chronic leukemia and an acute leukemia is
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A chronic leukemia may take several years to be lethal, whereas an acute leukemia can lead to death in a few months.
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The BCR-ABL translocation found in CML illustrates the role of ____ in the generation of a cancer cell.
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growth factor pathways
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A benign tumor differs from a malignant one in that
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a benign tumor is an abnormal growth that has stayed in the tissue layer from which it originated, whereas a malignant tumor is an abnormal growth that has invaded adjacent tissues and metastasized to other parts of the body
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AML, acute myeloid leukemia, is presented in the text as an example of a cancer caused by
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breaks in the chromosomes that lead to translocations and gene fusions
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What is the most realistic way of looking at cancer?
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Getting cancer is largely a consequence of living such long lives, and would still occur to at least some of us in our old age even in an ideal world of natural foods and clean air
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One complication that arises from chemotherapy for leukemia (and other cancers) is
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The chemo drugs kill cells that are multiplying, and so will kill off all types of blood cells since blood cells are always actively growing.
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You hear that an acquaintance is being treated for "brain cancer", and on further discussion you find that the doctors have identified that the protein, keratin, is expressed in the "brain cancer" cells. What would you conclude?
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That the cancer cells in the brain are actually a skin cancer that has metastasized to the brain
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An acute lymphocytic leukemia would be a cancer that
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Originates in the bone marrow, from cells committed to a lymphoid lineage, and is fast growing
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How might we define an oncogene?
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An oncogene is a gene that is mutated and is a direct contributor to the abnormal properties of the cancer cell.
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The results of a pap smear come back abnormal: the doctor describes the cells as "dysplastic". An appropriate level of response would be
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to conclude that a potentially dangerous situation exists, but that cancer is not inevitable and that the cells could be found to be normal upon subsequent examination
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Why is it useful to understand exactly what the genetic basis of a particular cancer is?
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The genetic basis of the cancer can determine the treatment, as is the case for CML caused by the BCR-ABL translocation.
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If a tumor was found that exhibited the following characteristics, how might the doctor and the patient decide to treat it?: T: Tis, N: nearby lymph nodes free of tumor cells, M: no evidence of distant metastases
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surgery to remove the tumor, followed by frequent observation
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The fusion gene, BCR-ABL, causes cancer by
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Short-circuiting a growth factor pathway, so that the cell gets grow instructions in the absence of growth factors.
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If "hepa-" refers to the liver, a hepatocellular carcinoma would be a
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a malignant tumor found on the liver, and perhaps elsewhere in the body, made of cells of liver origin
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Staging is important because
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It is the first step toward designing treatments for the cancer
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What are some generalizations regarding which cells are prone to cancer?
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Cells that are more exposed to the environment (skin), cells that proliferate a lot (blood), and cells that divide and pass on mutations they get to their progeny (stem cells)--all these are more prone to cancer
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The mechanism by which the chemotherapeutic drug cyclophosphamide kills lymphoma cells is by
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Damaging the DNA sufficiently to kill the cell
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A study might be designed to test the hypothesis: smoking cigarettes prevents lung cancer. Based on what we know about lung cancer, such a study would find a coefficient of correlation that was
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Strongly negative, disproving the hypothesis that smoking prevents lung cancer
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The observation that heavy cigarette smokers have a 20-fold increased risk for lung cancer means
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Cigarette smokers are 20 times more likely to be diagnosed with lung cancer than nonsmokers
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A new drug prospect must be extensively tested for safety and efficacy (effectiveness) before achieving approval for use; in which stages of the testing are potential drugs tested in humans?
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Humans are used in phase I, II, and III trials only, after safety has been demonstrated in preclinical trials.
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What does the bcl-2 protein do to contribute to the formation of the cancer cell in follicular lymphoma?
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Bcl-2 prevents the cell from dying, which it should normally do if it fails to recognize an invader.
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Follicular lymphoma involves translocations of which gene?
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BCL, which normally plays a role in the programmed cell death of used up blood cells
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Which cell type has become most fully matured before becoming a cancer cell?
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Myeloma
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Treatments for follicular lymphoma include Rituxan (rituximab), a relatively new type of therapeutic compound called
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a monoclonal antibody
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Which of the following would ideally be the best study format for analyzing the causes of cancer?
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Assemble a large random sample from the population and carefully observe their environmental exposures and genetic evidence during their lifetime, and correlate this data to their incidences of various cancers
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A cohort of identical twins was identified that were separated at birth and raised in different homes. The goal of this study might be to
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Determine if there was a genetically inherited component to cancer risk
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The largest number of volunteer patients are recruited for which phase of trials?
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Phase III trials
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All cancer treatments suffer from one unfortunate fact of life:
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Cancer cells are genetically unstable and mutate frequently in ways that make them resistant to a given cancer treatment.
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The difference between lymphoma cells and leukemia cells is
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Lymphoma cells are more mature than leukemia cells, and are in the lymph nodes, whereas leukemia cells remain in the bone marrow.
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What is a hybridoma?
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a cancer cell produced in the laboratory by fusing cancerous myeloma cells with normal antibody-producing B-cells.
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What is the role of normal B-cells?
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make antibodies to fight pathogens and invaders.
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Which group is likely to have the higher incidence of cancer?
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A group of 80 year olds that have spent their lives smoking, hanging out at the beach all day, and eating all their meals at McDonalds
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In analyzing epidemiological data on cancer, it is important to make adjustments to the data to account for
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the age of the population
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When monoclonal antibodies are produced, an immortal myeloma is fused with a plasma cell, leading to a hybrid cell. The result is:
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The hybrid cell has properties of both cells: immortal growth and antibody production.
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Epidemiological studies on skin cancer leave us with what big take-home lesson on skin cancer?
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Skin cancer is largely preventable
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What controls the sites to which a tumor can metastasize?
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Tumor cells can initially travel to any site to which they have access, but will readily establish a new focus of growth in those few tissues for which the “soil” matches the “seed”
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Are there properties of normal breast epithelia which make it relatively easy for the cells of this tissue to undergo the progression to cancer?
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Yes: Proliferation, invasion, and angiogenesis are all properties shared by normal breast epithelia and cancer cells, which may contribute to the ease by which breast tissue can become cancerous
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What is meant by the phrase “cancer is clonal”?
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Since many changes must occur in a single cell for the cell to become a cancer cell, most cancers arise from a single cell that has undergone all the changes.
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DNA damage caused by exposure to sunlight (UV light) will
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have to be repaired before the cell cycle can resume, prevent successful replication of the DNA genome, & stop the cell cycle at the R point.
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Checkpoints occur throughout the cell cycle; the checkpoint that most concerns us in our study of cancer is where in the cell cycle?
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at the boundary between the G1 phase and the S phase
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The breast cancer drugs, tamoxifen and Herceptin, are similar in that
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They both act by interfering with growth signals that the cancer cell depends on
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How are the roles of estrogen in breast cancer and testosterone in prostate cancer similar?
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They are both hormones that normally control tissue proliferation, and can be required for continued proliferation of the cells even after they become cancer cells
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Growth factor signals that promote division act by
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activating cyclin-dependent kinase
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Prostate cancer and breast cancer share which property in common?
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both arise from ductal epithelial cells that are under hormonal control
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The cell cycle is a process in which
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the alternation between division and the non-dividing interphase is tightly controlled at checkpoints, which ensure that cells reproduce only when it is appropriate
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At which stage is it least likely that a breast cancer might be detectable by standard screening practices?
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Carcinoma in situ
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The restriction point is controlled by an internal clock mechanism made of
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Cyclin
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A genetic predisposition to breast cancer can be caused by getting
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one mutated copy of BRCA1 or BRCA2 from the father or mother
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Hormone-like molecules that influence cell division are called
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growth factors
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What is the major environmental risk factors for lung cancer?
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Cigarette smoking
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How are tumor suppressor genes compared to oncogenes?
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the opposite of oncogenes, in that they normally provide a mechanism that stops cells from dividing inappropriately
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Inheritance of a bad copy of which gene can predispose one to melanoma?
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P16
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The term signal transduction refers to
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the intracellular events that follow binding of a hormone to a cell surface receptor
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Which statement is true of both lung cancer and skin cancer?
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once metastasis has occurred, the chances of being cured are not good.
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Name 3 tumor suppressor genes/proteins
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BRCA1, P53, Rb
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The most common skin cancer is called ___, whereas the most dangerous skin cancer is ___.
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basal cell carcinoma, melanoma
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Colorectal cancer is caused by
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several mutations in both oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes
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A key component of P53 action is to
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turn on the production of a protein which inhibits the cyclin-CDK complex
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The action of P16 is most similar to the action of
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Rb
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The tumor suppressor Rb is named for
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the cancer associated with it, retinoblastoma
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In a large proportion of “small-cell” lung cancer (~90%), what happens to Rb and P53?
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both copies of Rb and P53 are lost
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How does cachexia differ from normal weight loss?
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in cachexia, muscle mass is lost as readily as fat
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The difference between oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes is
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oncogenes, when normal, promote cell division, whereas tumor suppressor genes, when normal, inhibit cell division
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