Question: What ways are there of discovering cancers? lumps,bleeding etc

Matthew Lee answered on 16 Jun 2017:

Quite a few. Lumps is one of the main ones, but this only works for areas that are accessible, like the skin, breasts, testicles. Bleeding is a good one as well and is a symptom of a few cancers like bladder cancer. Other things can be moles for skin cancer, high temperatures, nausea, headaches, painful bones, persistent illnesses, really bad coughs. These are all symptoms, and so are a result of cancer.

Ways we discover cancer can be by looking at the above symptoms and then doing more investigations like blood tests, or biopsies, MR scans, CT scans. When we look at blood and biopsies what we look for are things called biomarkers, these are molecules or signals that are highly upregulated (means there is a lot more) in cancer, so if we see these then it makes us think there might be a cancer.