Invasion

Invasion is the spread of cancer cells from the primary tumor to adjacent normal tissue. This is one of the main signs of tumor malignancy.

Invasion occurs when cancer cells penetrate the basement membrane into adjacent tissue. The basement membrane is a thin layer of extracellular matrix that separates epithelial cells from other tissues. During invasion, cancer cells destroy the basement membrane using special enzymes.

After penetrating the basement membrane, cancer cells begin to spread to surrounding tissues. They can move either individually or in whole groups. Cancer cells secrete various biologically active substances that promote their invasion and metastasis.

The ability to invade varies among different types of cancer. For example, non-small cell lung cancer is highly invasive, whereas early-stage prostate cancer is often non-invasive.

Determining the invasiveness of cancer is of great clinical importance, as it allows one to predict the possibility of metastasis and choose the optimal treatment tactics.

Invasion is the spread of cancer cells from the primary site to adjacent normal tissue. This process is one of the main characteristics of tumor malignancy.

During invasion, cancer cells grow through the basement membrane into surrounding tissues and organs. They migrate through the lymphatic and blood vessels, forming distant metastases in other parts of the body.

The ability to invade depends on many factors, including the characteristics of the cancer cells themselves, their interaction with the tumor microenvironment, as well as the body’s immune response.

Determining the invasiveness of cancer is of great importance for prognosis of the course of the disease and the choice of treatment tactics. The higher the invasive potential of a tumor, the faster it grows and gives distant metastases. Therefore, assessing the ability of cancer cells to invade helps doctors determine the stage of the disease and select the most effective treatment for a particular patient.

Invasion may refer to lung, cervical, breast or thyroid cancer. Or it could be a surgical operation or it will be described as how, with chickenpox, the infection spreads through the healthy skin of other people. Invasion may be detected by microscopic examination or may be the result of D-dimer analysis.[6] In oncology, “invasion” characterizes the ability of neoplasms to grow into underlying tissues as a result of uncontrolled growth, which they received from the body’s cells and acquired their structures. Invasiveness (from Latin invaedo - “I crash”). This property distinguishes tumor cells from ordinary cells present in the body. In other words, the invasive type of cancer is characterized by the formation of pathological cells (“metastasis”) that are capable of multiplying and at the same time growing into nearby tissues, in cases where the size of the primary tumor site is still small. In other words, the size of the primary tumor increases due to the spread of cancer cells into the surrounding soft tissue. Subsequently, the oncological tumor continues to grow due to nutrition by body tissues. As a result, metastases spread throughout the body, affecting vital organs. If a cancerous tumor grows in the mammary gland, then metastasis is observed in a wide range of lymph nodes and metastases to the nervous system are 4 times more likely.