“It begins as a single cell and grows into a merciless disease that claims millions of lives year after year. But scientists are steadily unlocking its mysteries, and the fight against it may now have reached a dramatic turning point. New discoveries promise better therapies and hope in the war against ...” The disease referred to in the above quotation is

The quotation describes a disease that originates from a single transformed cell which then proliferates into a lethal mass — a defining feature of cancer. Single-cell–level studies have directly observed solitary cells reverting to a stem-like state and later expanding into tumors, and recent research links errors in the cell cycle of individual cells to malignant growth, supporting the description of a “single cell” origin and a dramatic turning point in therapy development [3]. General cell biology also underpins this view: multicellular bodies are made of cells and cancer arises when one cell’s regulation is lost and it clonally expands, causing high mortality worldwide, matching the passage’s emphasis on “millions of lives” and new therapeutic hope [3].

Sources

1. [2] https://www.hsci.harvard.edu/news/cancers-surprise-origins-caught-action
2. [3] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/2024/05/scientists-track-doubling-in-origin-of-cancer-cells
3. [1] Science ,Class VIII . NCERT(Revised ed 2025) > Chapter 2: The Invisible Living World: Beyond Our Naked Eye > 2.5 Why Is Cell Considered to Be a Basic Unit of Life? > p. 23