Word: tumorous
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Folkman likens this tumor expansion process to the construction of an apartment complex on the spot where a lone house once stood. The plumbing and electricity--meaning the cell's blood--must be improved dramatically, since the apartment's residents cannot survive on the much fewer resources of the old house...
...tumor manages to coax nearby blood vessels to come to its aid, it can continue on its growth pattern past the "apartment complex" stage, ballooning up from the size of a pinprick to that of a golf-ball or even larger...
...That's very dangerous," Folkman says. "That's when the tumor can grow exponentially." Even more importantly, he says, the newly-recruited blood vessels allow the tumor to send out offshoots known as metastases, which travel through the circulatory system until they lodge in vital organs such as lymph nodes, the lungs, brain or sexual organs...
Wreaking such havoc on the body is impossible without the help of local capillaries, the Harvard group found. If a tumor is unsuccessful in recruiting nearby blood vessels, it quickly starves, remaining a dormant and harmless lump of renegade cells surrounded by the body's normal cells...
Although a tumor must clear about 15 biological hurdles before metastasis occurs, scientists have become convinced that tripping up the tumor is easiest and most effective at this early stage...