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Chemistry Of Cancer Essay

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Emma Salvo
Honors Chemistry
October 18, 2017

Rough Draft: The Chemistry of Cancer

Introduction According to the National Institutes of Health, in 2016 more than 595,000 people died from cancer, and the US is projected to spend more than $150 billion in the treatment of cancer by 2020 (“Cancer Statistics”). Many of us know a friend or loved one who was killed by a form of cancer, and we may know someone fighting the disease right at this very moment. For this project, I wanted to look at the chemical reasons for why cancer forms, how it grows in the human body, and what can be done to stop it. While scientists are still learning about cancer and its effects, there is a lot of scientific evidence that points to free radicals as one of the …show more content…

The result is what we call a free radical cascade, an enormous chain reaction of free radicals that quickly wreaks havoc on living tissue” (Howard). Because of the constant loss of one electron, the organic molecules affected by the free radical are being oxidized. This has caused scientists to refer to the process as “oxidative stress” (Nimse and Pal).
However, in other cases, enormous molecules can be created as the oxygen molecule takes an electron from a nearby hydrocarbon. It glues itself to the original molecule and leaves the end of that original molecule one electron short. For example, the following reaction shows what happens when an organic peroxide comes into contact with ethylene. Asterisks show an unpaired electron.

R-O-O-R → R-O* + *O-R

R-O* + H2C=CH2→ RO-CH2-CH2*

RO-CH2-CH2* + H2C=CH2 → RO-CH2-CH2-CH2-CH2*
(Atteya)

As the reactions show, the unpaired electron chops the double bond between the carbon atoms in ethylene, turning it into longer and longer free radicals.

Free Radicals and Cancer
Free radicals can cause cancerous tumors when they form longer and longer free radicals in one location (Atteya), causing the proteins and other compounds the body naturally produced to become transformed into larger and more complicated organic compounds that the body doesn’t know what to do with. Dr. Atteya refers to this as “localized” cancer.
However, free radicals

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