Sarcoma is a type of cancer that mainly develops in connective tissue. It is often separated into two categories, bone and soft tissue sarcomas.
Your body is made of billions of tiny cells, and every day, millions of them undergo mitosis (a cell creating a copy of itself) and have to copy the equivalent of a million pages of genetic information. Inevitably, there are a lot of mistakes. Most of the mistakes are fixed immediately (there are checkpoints in the cell cycle where a cell checks if the DNA copied is correct), but sometimes they can't, or are just missed. In this case, the cell will most often undergo apoptosis, whether directed to by its own internal mechanisms, or by the immune system.
If all these system fail, and the damage activates one (or more) of a specific set systems in the cell, in can start to grow rapidly, using resources that other cells need, becoming cancer.
Connective tissue is a rather broad category of tissues, including:
Surgery is the primary treatment for non-metastatic sarcomas and is often considered the most effective approach to achieve a cure. A small variety of other drugs are available to minimize future occurrences.
While radiation therapy is not frequently employed, it can play a role in some sarcoma cases. It is typically administered either before or after surgery to assist in shrinking the tumor, facilitating its removal, or to eliminate any remaining cancerous cells.
If surgery is not a viable option, radiation can be used as an alternate form of treatment.
Chemotherapy is also infrequently employed, but can be effective in certain cases.
Traditional chemotherapy shares similar roles to radiation therapy, in that it is seldom the main form of treatment, but can be used to assist surgery.
Winchester High School is raising money for the Winchester Hospital's Richard C. Heidbreder Patient Comfort fund.
The raised resources will mainly go to helping those battling cancer with additional therapy not covered by any insurance.
The monetary goal of this fundraiser is $10,000 by 17/01/2025, and we currently (04/01/2025) have raised $1,419 (7%). Any support would be greatly appreciated.
As part of your donation, you can apply your money into a teachers 'Pie-in-the-Face', where the teacher with the most donated in their name will have the honor of a pie in the face during the school-wide fundraising event.
For more info about the campaign and how to donate, see the Google site .
One of the main reasons is that 'cancer' is not just a single disease, but a broad label encompassing over 200 major types and several hundreds of variations.
Another important reason is that cancer looks too much like you.
Cancer cells, on the outside, look very similar to your own cells (because they are, really), so any drug or treatment that kills cancer cells will inevitably kill your own cells as well. The only major outward signs that a cell is cancerous is rapid division, as well as the cell being stressed and producing abnormal proteins (some proteins only exist in your cells when you are a young baby).
There are some treatments that can hamper and kill cancer-like cells, by targeting the cells that are in the middle of reproducing. However, this also targets fast-dividing cells, such as hair, blood production, and major parts of the immune system.