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Cancerous. Malignant cells can invade and destroy nearby tissues and spread to other parts of the body.

Non-Malignant, not cancerous. Benign tumours may grow larger but do not spread to other parts of the body.

A term for diseases in which abnormal cells divide without control and can invade nearby tissues. Cancer cells can also spread to other parts of the body through the blood and lymph systems. There are several main types of cancer, including carcinomas, sarcomas, leukaemias, lymphomas, multiple myeloma, and many others.

Immunotherapy, sometimes called biological therapy, is a type of cancer treatment that works by boosting a person’s own immune system to fight the cancer. Immunotherapy is currently approved in Australia for some types of cancers and is also being trialled for other cancers.

The spread of cancer cells from the place where they first formed to another part of the body. In metastasis, cancer cells break away from the original (primary) tumour, travel through the blood or lymph system, and form a new tumour in other organs or tissues of the body. The new, metastatic tumour is the same type of cancer as the primary tumour. For example, if breast cancer spreads to the lung, the cancer cells in the lung are breast cancer cells, not lung cancer cells. The plural form of metastasis is metastases.