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Alright so im writing about vampires in my story, basically they release a lot of body heat from hyper accelerated cell growth

My question is does this ever backfire and they regenerate outta control and get cancer?

Considering giving them cancer as to give them a drawback when fighting the good guys to make them not too Overpowered

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  • $\begingroup$ The energy for regeneration has to come from somewhere. especially with all that heat. Probably a good reason to make vampires ambush predators now that I think about it. $\endgroup$
    – IT Alex
    Commented Jun 22, 2023 at 14:57

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Body parts which heal faster tend to be more prone to cancer.

The faster a body part heals irl, the more prone it is to cancer. This is because every time it regenerates there is a chance it goes wrong and gets cancer.

The more a vampire regenerates a body part, the more chance of cancer

Every time their body regenerates it will accumulate more and more mutations which risk damage. As such, the good guys have the option of just repeatedly cutting off or destroying body parts, so gradually the vampire will have massive tumours in any regenerated body parts.

This would also depend on how good their genetics were

Strong genetics might make them more resistant to mutations or damage, with cancer suppressing genes being more effective. You could represent this with bloodlines. A big boss vampire might have a stronger bloodline and be more resistant to tumours, while a basic vampire would have a weaker bloodline and easily get tumours.

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It is certainly a possibility.

Cancer is caused by when cells mutate slowly over time and with the right mutations in the right places it leads to cancer. With the way you describe the regeneration as hyper accelerated cell growth it does lead me to believe that given enough time using it the regeneration, especially areas that get damaged/destroyed more often than other parts of their body, they would eventually get cancer as mutations in the cells pile up more and more.

Do note that the cancer risk for vampires would have probably reduced over the years as the more resistant ones could use their regeneration more to keep them alive for longer (most likely through use of the evolution of more tumor suppressor genes to help reduce the risk of mutations piling up as a area regenerates more and more if I were to guess).

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