Childhood Cancer

Common cold and cancer: The simplest explanation is that some RNA virus, if you understand cell biology, can reverse-transcribe its RNA code into DNA, and place that DNA into the nucleus. Such recombination can make cells more susceptible to cancer.

Cancer can be caused by of overexpression of certain proteins or a loss of function of tumor suppressors that serve as checkpoints before passing into another phase of the cell cycle. An example is inhibiting the entry into mitosis when there is DNA damage in the chromosomes, whether from X-ray radiation or mutagen (usually, but not always, a carcinogen). When the cell successfuly uses homologous recombination to repair the damage, then mitosis can proceed. Otherwise, unchecked damage can result in increased number of mutations, one of which will lead to cancer, and most destructive of all, metastasis.