Ras Thavas led us to an enormous room where we beheld such a spectacle as probably never had been enacted elsewhere in the entire universe. In the center of the room was a huge tank about four feet high from which were emerging hideous monstrosities almost beyond the powers of human imagination to conceive; and surrounding the tank were a great number of hormad warriors with their officers, rushing upon the terrible creatures, overpowering and binding them, or destroying them if they were too malformed to function successfully as fighting men. At least fifty per centum of them had to be thus destroyed—fearful caricatures of life that were neither beast nor man. One was only a great mass of living flesh with an eye somewhere and a single hand. Another had developed with its arms and legs transposed, so that when it walked it was upside down with its head between its legs. The features of many were grotesquely misplaced. Noses, ears, eyes, mouths might be scattered indiscriminately anywhere over the surfaces of torso or limbs. These were all destroyed; only those were preserved which had two arms and legs and the facial features of which were somewhere upon the head. The nose might be under an ear and the mouth above the eyes, but if they could function appearance was of no importance.
Ras Thavas viewed them with evident pride. "What do you think of them?" he asked The Warlord.
- WHAT ARE POLYPLOID GIANT CANCER CELLS (PGCCS)?
The size of PGCCs can vary significantly and be as large as 10 to 20 times as compared with that of regular diploid cells depending on the content of the DNA and the number of nuclei in the cells. Genetically, the DNA content in these giant cells needs to be equal (4C) or greater than tetraploid (> 4C). Depending on the tumor type or treatment, PGCCs can vary in numbers and generally increase with tumor stage, grade, and treatment [19]. Endoreplication provides an efficient strategy for growth and development from plants to mammals. If energy sources are limited or if cells are in rapid growth, increasing the cell volume and DNA content without division is more advantageous [20]. Similarly, PGCCs have a distinct advantage over regular cancer cells in dealing with stresses and reproduction [3-4, 6-7]. Increasing DNA content by endoreplication is a widely utilized effective mechanism to sustain the mass production of proteins and for high metabolic activity necessary for tumor growth.