Over 500,000 people in the United States and over 8 million people worldwide are dying every year from cancer. As people live longer, the incidence of cancer is rising worldwide and the disease is expected to strike over 20 million people annually by 2030. This open course is designed for people who would like to develop an understanding of cancer and how it is prevented, diagnosed, and treated.
The course introduces the molecular biology of cancer (oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes) as well as the biologic hallmarks of cancer. The course also describes the risk factors for the major cancers worldwide, including lung cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, liver cancer, and stomach cancer. We explain how cancer is staged, the major ways cancer is found by imaging, and how the major cancers are treated.
In addition to the core materials, this course includes two Honors lessons devoted to cancers of the liver and prostate.
Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
- Identify the major types of cancer worldwide. (Lecture 1)
- Describe how genes contribute to the risk and growth of cancer. (Lecture 2)
- List and describe the ten cellular hallmarks of cancer. (Lecture 3)
- Define metastasis, and identify the major steps in the metastatic process. (Lecture 4)
- Describe the role of imaging in the screening, diagnosis, staging, and treatments of cancer. (Lecture 5)
- Explain how cancer is treated. (Lecture 6)
We hope that this course gives you a basic understanding of cancer biology and treatment. The course is not designed for patients seeking treatment guidance – but it can help you understand how cancer develops and provides a framework for understanding cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Status: Clinical Trials
Clinical Trials
Status: Treatment Planning
Treatment Planning
Beginner·Course·8 hours
Featured reviews
KI
5.0·Reviewed May 9, 2020
Brilliant! I loved it! Learnt a lot, helps me in my field of Artificial Intelligence by understanding what cancer really means. Helps me empathize with the challenges at hand better. Thank you.
GG
5.0·Reviewed Apr 2, 2022
Great introductory course for students and researchers interested in the field of cancer. Thanks a lot to Coursera and instructors from JHU med school to put it together. Highly recommended!
TS
5.0·Reviewed Aug 16, 2020
This is a very basic course designed by an excellent team with ease so that non-technical person can also be benefitted from it. Thank you, for this great course. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
AK
5.0·Reviewed Aug 1, 2020
Excellent course for anyone interested in knowing more about the origin, diagnosis and treatment of cancer, even for beginners. Thanks to JHU for putting such an excellent course material together!
FM
5.0·Reviewed Jun 13, 2021
Great course, I'm 15 and learned a lot. The ease with which each lesson can be understood changed lesson to lesson, depending on how well the researcher explained. But still great course!
LB
5.0·Reviewed Apr 11, 2022
The course is very structured in a way that the student who does not have any heavy background in Oncology will understand the course. Thank you very much for the student-friendly lessons!
MS
5.0·Reviewed Oct 5, 2023
This very helpful for me and my concepts about cancer and their types main reason cause and treatment of this disease really it's very effective I shall be very thankful for coursera team
AH
5.0·Reviewed Mar 18, 2017
I am an Undergraduate student and i didnt even read oncology subject, but this course not just start the beginer level , butt gradually it goes in depth and the flow of lectuures and topics is smooth
SI
5.0·Reviewed Jan 14, 2022
A beautifully structured course with highly valuable information explained with great detail in a simplified manner. Highly recommended for anyone interested to gain overall understanding of Cancer.
RN
4.0·Reviewed Feb 11, 2020
i enjoyed the information gthat i have learned in this course. however, I already learnt the majority of these information i my university. hope that there is more detailed course about cancer
SS
5.0·Reviewed Apr 12, 2019
Thanks a lot, Dr. Kenneth; the course has been very informative and mind-opening--it has also whetted my appetite to learn more about the topic.Thanks and best of regards in your endeavours!
VS
5.0·Reviewed Aug 16, 2019
Course is concise and professors are well learned in their fields. Information in the course is relatively well dispersed. Use of diagrams is good and makes it easy to remember the content
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D
Dan
3.0
·Reviewed Dec 26, 2018
Informative but not very engaging. Videos were mainly slide after slide of text with the occasional graphic. Presenters sounded bored and read the slides almost verbatim, often going too fast. End-of-week quizzes were just compilations of the in-video quizzes. Also frequent errors and typos in quizzes.
'Honors' liver cancer course was essentially identical to the liver cancer section in the main course.
S
Simon Shahin
5.0
·Reviewed Apr 12, 2019
Thanks a lot, Dr. Kenneth; the course has been very informative and mind-opening--it has also whetted my appetite to learn more about the topic.
Thanks and best of regards in your endeavours!
A
Ayesha Hameed
5.0
·Reviewed Mar 18, 2017
I am an Undergraduate student and i didnt even read oncology subject, but this course not just start the beginer level , butt gradually it goes in depth and the flow of lectuures and topics is smooth
I
Ibrahim Yakubu
5.0
·Reviewed Feb 26, 2017
great course with very experience lecturers . it has helped me to gain more insight into cancer development. thank you so much Dr. Kenneth J. Pienta and the other doctors. God bless you all.
F
Fardin Asfar Antor
5.0
·Reviewed Jun 7, 2020
It was a course of much interest. Everything is explained very simply. I have learned lot of important information. I am delighted to be able to do this online course at JOHNS HOPIKNS university.
O
Omer Khalid
5.0
·Reviewed Nov 23, 2016
It will be very helpful to me for doing my research work on the very same topic.
But all of these courses should be free of cost,just like this one.
Thanking you once again !
Regards.
M
Mohammad Daoud Alalyan
5.0
·Reviewed Dec 19, 2018
كانت دورة مفيدة لفهم السرطان
S
Shriya Iyer
5.0
·Reviewed Jan 14, 2022
A beautifully structured course with highly valuable information explained with great detail in a simplified manner. Highly recommended for anyone interested to gain overall understanding of Cancer.
A
Ankit Kumar
5.0
·Reviewed Aug 1, 2020
Excellent course for anyone interested in knowing more about the origin, diagnosis and treatment of cancer, even for beginners. Thanks to JHU for putting such an excellent course material together!
M
Madison Abbassi
5.0
·Reviewed Apr 27, 2020
I'm a high schooler who's always loved science, but I really felt a need to understand cancer after my grandma was diagnosed with stage 3c NSLC. This course gave me that understanding.
From completing this course with honors, I've learned so much about cancer - from its history to cellular biology to current standard-of-care cancer drugs. The instructors explained complicated processes clearly and provided many diagrams and medical scans in their presentations (as a visual learner, this was really helpful). I would absolutely recommend it.
Thank you so much, Coursera!
K
Ka Te
1.0
·Reviewed Jul 25, 2019
Not great, very basic. The times are greatly exaggerated (quizzes said they'd take 20 minutes to complete - most took no more than 5 minutes). Not challenging at all. The discussion forum is a ghost town, although the course just started weeks ago, there are posts that are YEARS old that no instructor has replied to.
Ö
Övünç Barın
5.0
·Reviewed Sep 4, 2019
Introduction to the Biology of Cancer has taken a big role in my personal development.Not only has it broadened my horizon,but it also has encouraged me to study this field in the future along with my field physics.Many thanks for precious teachers who has taught each topic delicately and thoroughly during this course.
A
Andressa Silva
5.0
·Reviewed Oct 17, 2021
A didática do curso é excelente, os docentes conseguem, em poucos minutos, explicar diversos assuntos de forma simples. Além disso, o conteúdo é super completo e corresponde a todas as expectativas.
Z
Zhaodong Wu
5.0
·Reviewed Mar 27, 2019
Brilliant course, this is my 1st course in coursera, and it broadens my horizon.
V
Vamsi Krishna
5.0
·Reviewed Feb 1, 2019
Great introduction. But do not stop with this course, if you are planning to do some good work in the field of cancer. This is just the beginning.
L
Laura Wilby
3.0
·Reviewed Aug 14, 2017
This course was overall a nice overview of the material. I found the subject matter interesting and I liked the mix of subjects from biology to clinical methods. I am mainly interested in the biology of cancer, but I found it quite nice to also learn a bit about treatments and imaging. The reason I am only giving it three stars is because I wished that their were some written study materials or some recommendations on further reading or activities to help re-inforce the material in the lectures. The lectures sometimes felt a bit rushed, particularly the ones with a lot of new terminology and it was difficult to feel like I was retaining the information.
R
Rakshith K
5.0
·Reviewed Feb 4, 2019
The course was helpful for me to learn about the science of cancer biology. Being a pathology student this helped me in understanding the concepts of cancer which s very important for me for my future. Thank you doctors and thank you Coursera !!
J
Jake Fromowitz
5.0
·Reviewed Jan 5, 2019
Extremely informative, will use moving along my career trajectory in medicine!
P
Parth Rajendrakumar Joshi
5.0
·Reviewed Feb 3, 2019
great for beginners like me to dive into world of cancer treatments
