- cancerous cells often break the mitochondria forcing cell into a secondary respiration mode
- they also trigger vascular growth but chaotically
- since the cell is in this alternative respiration, they don't need normal arteries to get energy so the chaotic arterial network they grow is not a problem
- IIRC this network also impedes chemotoxins to reach the cell as fast as normal cells
- if you starve your body from sugar, you'll hurt the normal cells (which are in full respiration mode) while the cancerous will keep their metabolysm
It was a bunch of things like this but when you take distance, you have a dysfunctional cell that somehow is setup to construct a near perfect bed of survival in his own destructive processes.. it's almost smart.
Also of note is tumor heterogenity. Not only are cancers different between cell origin and across different patients, cancer is not one uniform genetic entity even inside a single person.
Why? The cancer's ability to repair DNA mutations is crap, so different chunks of tumor can rapidly evolve different mutations.
You might be able to drug one portion of the tumor based on a fancy receptor/biomarker, but that tumor chunk will get outcompeted by a different cancer blob that doesn't express that.
I've read not too long ago that a tumor is actually mostly an outer layer of active cells, the inner is made up of dead tumors probably serving as nutrient (<= very blurry on this). yet another part of that strange anti-life living form named cancer.
