Types of Cancer

Under scientific review

This introductory page is under scientific review. Use it for orientation, not clinical decision-making.

Educational note: this is a navigation guide, not a complete classification. Formal diagnosis depends on pathology, anatomy, molecular findings, and clinical context.

TL;DR

Cancer types can be organized by tissue of origin, organ system, cell lineage, molecular driver, and stage. For software systems, classifying a tumor simply as "Breast Cancer" or "Lung Cancer" is a severe data modeling flaw. A modern oncology taxonomy requires a relational model that connects Topography (Where the tumor is physically located) and Morphology (What the cell looks like under the microscope). Cancer is not one disease, but hundreds of distinct diseases grouped under an umbrella term.

Major Tissue Families

Family	Origin	Examples
Carcinoma	Epithelial tissues	Breast, lung, colorectal, prostate, stomach, pancreas, head and neck
Sarcoma	Bone, soft tissue, fat, muscle, vessels, connective tissue	Osteosarcoma, liposarcoma, leiomyosarcoma, GIST
Leukemia	Blood-forming tissues	AML, ALL, CLL, CML
Lymphoma	Lymphoid cells and lymphatic tissues	Hodgkin lymphoma, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, follicular lymphoma
Plasma-cell neoplasm	Plasma cells	Multiple myeloma
CNS tumor	Brain and spinal-cord tissues	Glioblastoma, astrocytoma, medulloblastoma, meningioma
Germ-cell tumor	Germ cells	Testicular germ-cell tumors, ovarian germ-cell tumors
Neuroendocrine tumor	Neuroendocrine cells	NETs, small-cell lung cancer, Merkel cell carcinoma

The Data Modeling Problem

If your database has a column cancer_type = 'Lung Cancer', you have a critical problem. Two patients with "Lung Cancer" can have completely different diseases, requiring distinct treatments and clinical trials. A robust oncology database must map the disease across multiple axes:

1. Topography (Primary Site vs Metastasis): Did the tumor start in the lung, or was it a breast tumor that migrated to the lung? A breast tumor in the lung is still treated with breast cancer drugs.
2. Morphology (Histology): Small Cell (SCLC) vs Non-Small Cell (NSCLC).
3. Histological Subtype: Within NSCLC, is it an Adenocarcinoma or a Squamous Cell Carcinoma?
4. Molecular Driver: Does it have an EGFR mutation? An ALK fusion?

The Topography + Morphology Axis (The Golden Rule)

Whenever you model oncology data, remember the Topography + Morphology pattern. A tumor is always defined by the intersection of "Where it was born" and "What was the original cell type".

Controlled Vocabularies (Ontologies)

To avoid relying on free text (where doctors write "Lung ca", "Pulmonary cancer", "NSCLC"), modern systems use rigorous ontologies:

• ICD-O-3 (International Classification of Diseases for Oncology): The global gold standard. It has separate codes for Topography (e.g., C34.9 for Lung) and Morphology (e.g., 8140/3 for Malignant Adenocarcinoma). The /3 at the end indicates it is malignant and invasive.
• SNOMED CT: Extensive clinical terminology used in Electronic Health Records (EHRs). Capable of capturing not just the disease, but surgical procedures and anatomopathological findings with hierarchical relationships.
• NCIt (NCI Thesaurus): Massive semantic dictionary from the US National Cancer Institute, covering drugs, anatomy, and clinical jargon. Essential for NLP and interoperability.
• OncoTree (MSKCC): A simplified taxonomic tree focused on clinical utility, widely used to cross-reference genomic data with tumor types (used in cBioPortal).

Survival and Statistics

Survival varies dramatically by cancer type, stage, age, biology, access, and treatment era. Use current registry sources such as SEER, NCI, INCA, IARC/GLOBOCAN, or national registries, and state the population and year range.

References

1. National Cancer Institute. A to Z List of Cancer Types. https://www.cancer.gov/types
2. National Cancer Institute. Cancers by Body Location/System. https://www.cancer.gov/types/by-body-location
3. National Cancer Institute. What Is Cancer? https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/what-is-cancer
4. SEER. Cancer Stat Facts. https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/
5. INCA. Estimativa de câncer no Brasil. https://www.gov.br/inca/pt-br/assuntos/cancer/numeros/estimativa