Do the breast cancer cells have a normal number of chromosomes?
Knowing how many chromosomes are in your breast cancer cells gives your doctor an idea of how fast your tumor is growing. Ploidy is a measurement of the number of chromosomes in cancer cells. Diploid cells in the breast have a normal number of chromosomes. Aneuploid cells in the breast have an abnormal number of chromosomes. The presence of extra chromosomes mean that, as these cells grew faster than normal, mistakes occurred during cell division, leading to an abnormal number of chromosomes in the cells. Breast cancers containing aneuploid cells grow faster than breast cancers containing diploid cells. • Is the breast cancer caused by oncogene overexpression? Your doctor will also want to measure the amount of proteins being produced by your breast cancer cells. Excessive levels of certain proteins are caused by oncogene overexpression. Oncogenes are genes that regulate the rate of cell growth in the body. Oncogene overexpression means that extra copies of the oncogenes are present in
