But cancer is, in a sense, a disorder of internal homeostasis: its hallmark is that cell division is dysregulated. The genes that control these accelerators and brakes are broken—i.e., mutated—such that proteins that they encode, the regulators of cell division, no longer function in their appropriate contexts. The accelerators are permanently jammed, or the brakes fail permanently. More typically, it is a combination of both events—jammed accelerator genes and snapped brakes—that drives the dysfunctional growth of a cancer cell. The cars speed through the traffic jam, piling up on each other
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