Posted by My STEAM project is about how compromised lungs due to carcinogens, like smoking, have a change in cells. The change experienced in the cells makes it harder to fight off foreign matter to keep the lungs healthy. With that, lung cancer is the outcome and tumors will most likely form. Left untreated, the cancer cells proliferate the cancer and the tumor(s) typically metastasize in other organs. My project is showing metastasis in the brain.
Samantha did her project on lung cancer and how it metastasizes in the brain. According to a research paper written by Altorki N, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the world. Basically, what it breaks down to is that a healthy lung is resistant to and designed to fight off carcinogens (mostly from smoking or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), but when they become inflamed the lung may accept the carcinogens it would normally fight off. Once that happens, if it goes undetected, a tumor can form which will be accompanied by cancer associated fibroblasts which promote the growth of blood vessels to the tumors. Evidently roughly 20-40 percent of lung cancer patients end up with brain metastases which are almost always fatal.