For years, people have searched for a cure for the devastating disease cancer. Cancer is the third leading cause of death in the United States with over 2,500,000 deaths per year. Oncologists and scientists across the country are researching all forms of cancer in an effort to understand, treat and ultimately defeat this disease. Numerous advances have already been made in this field, such as chemotherapy and gene therapy. One advance was the use of a cellular process known as apoptosis. By harnessing this normal cellular process, scientists hope to have found an effective way to fight cancer. Cancer is a disease that affects human somatic cells. It causes cells to divide uncontrollably and form masses known as tumors. There are two different types of cancerous tumors. Some tumors are benign and other tumors are malignant. Benign tumors look similar to the tissues they come from and develop slowly. The tumor remains in the same area where it originated. Malignant tumors are made up of cells that do not resemble the tissue from which they come. They vary in shape and size. This allows pieces of the tumor to break off and spread to other parts of the body. In recent decades, cancer has become a widespread disease. There are many different types of cancer and many different causes for the disease. Most cancers are due to a genetic mutation. The most common type occurs when a cell divides. Proto-oncogenes, which are alleles in normal cells, mutate to form oncogenes. These oncogenes cause cancer because they do not allow cells to self-destruct or become epistatic. There have been several research projects that have tested epistatis.DNA transfectionTo perform the experiments for this re...... half of the paper ......with both normal and malignant cells. The limited research conducted using these cells has produced contradictory results: some results state that alpha5beta1 integrins destroy tumor cells, other results have shown that cell division and other necessary cellular functions were encouraged by the integrin. But research has especially shown that the results of alpha5beta1 integrin expression produce beneficial results in terms of cancer tumor reduction. More research is needed, but the discovery from this experiment that alpha5beta1 integrin prevents premature cell death is an excellent step forward in the fight against cancer. There are countless possibilities for medical applications not only of alpha5beta1 integrins, but of all the numerous integrins and cell adhesion molecules that play an important role in cellular function.