Colorectal Cancer Basics

Hereditary CRC

Colorectal cancer (CRC) can be divided into two basic types, hereditary or sporadic.

    Hereditary CRC are germlineterm (passed to offspring) mutations (a damaging change in DNA) with two well described forms. These hereditary mutations are thought to reduce the time it takes for the cells to turn cancerous. Mutations can be thought of in terms of “hits”. One hit is one mutation. It is thought that a normal cell needs 3 to 6 hits to become cancerous. With an inherited mutation, there is one fewer hit needed to reach the correct number to transform the cell to cancer. One odd aspect to CRC is that there is a relatively well defined set of events for the progression from adenomaterm to carcinomaterm.