This book chapter will answer your queries regarding the differences you asked in your question. Follow the link given below:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9553/
Hi There, I am sure the former two answers clearly pointed to the differences between benign and malignant tumors. Since probably more than a century it finally is the pathologist who can (and has to) decide from usually a surgical biopsy if a tumor is malignant - or not. This should be described in pathology text books. Since you asked specifically for a "biochemical" difference, I think the answer is not that simple. There have been many, many aspects, hypotheses - and theories with facts for some tumors, but I am not the expert on that. It may pretty much depend on the tumor species - and every patient has different genes, and perhaps (slightly) different biochemistry - I think there is no general difference in "biochemistry" that all malignant tumors would share in any aspect different to benign tumor cells - or to normal cells.
To the best of my knowledge today, I once became the very first in the world to detect in a human primary medulloblastoma tumor (a malignant childhood tumor) a point mutation in the p53 (tumor supressor) gene. Basically I found two mutated tumor samples, but the other was silent. That was at a low percentage, but nowadays, many millions of dollars/Euros go into that research of what p53 does in those medulloblastoma tumors in men, for example, in Heidelberg.
Article p53 Mutations in Nonastrocytic Human Brain Tumors
thanks dr.Varun for this link and it quite agood answer for his quesation about the specifically for a "biochemical" difference
dr. maha al-sened
The cited textbook appears to be free online - and quite complete on many aspects of human and animal tumors, including some of the "biochemical" aspects. But I think one should not overemphasize any such biochemical differences, since the appear (to me) just as an epiphenomenon, which may not lead to useful therapies (the book describes the differences and doesn't imply that those could be used for therapies - perhaps the originator of the question here could think of using such a difference in treating cancer, which probably has been tried decades ago...).
I didn't look too carefully into the book (it could have escaped to my attention), but I didn't see any discussion of "cancer stem cells" or its theory or concept, which may be helpful to understand, that "metastasis" not necessarily should be seen as "late event", but could be just the potential of the original cancer stem cell... And: biochemical differences of subpopulations or the great majority of cells within a tumor could not exist when it comes to comparing the cancer stem cell.
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