The second leading cause of death in the United States is cancer and more than one million Americans are diagnosed with cancer each year, with this number likely to increase as the population ages.Cancer kills one out of six people in the developed world.

Cancer begins as a single cell that progresses through mutations to a malignancy. While there are over 100 distinct types of cancer, transformed malignant cells in all of the cancers can exhibit the following common properties:

• loss of anchorage dependence: whereas normal cells need to attach to surfaces in order to survive, cancerous cells can be found floating in suspension cultures
• loss of contact inhibition: whereas normal cells will arrest growth after they have filled up a defined area, malignant cells have no respect for this contact inhibition
• focus formation; in tissue cultures a single cell is transformed leading to a single cancerous colony
• genetic abnormalities such as deletions, translocations and chromosomal ploidy
• evasion of programmed cell death or apoptosis
• larger nuclear to cytoplasmic ratios
• sustained angiogeniesis through the secretion of growth factors
• Tissue invasion & metastasis of cancerous cells to other tissues
• Limitless replicative potential
• Insensitivity to anti-growth signals
• Self-sufficiency in growth signals

A Neoplasm is an abnormal mass, the growth of which is purposeless, autonomous and with a tendency to be an atypical and aggressive, new growth.  Oncology is the study of such neoplasms.