Describing cancer cells that have lost their normal structure and become primitive or undifferentiated, making them very aggressive and fast-growing.
From Greek 'ana-' (back, again) and 'plastikos' (able to be molded). The term emerged in 19th-century medicine to describe how cancer cells regress to a more primitive state, essentially reversing their normal development.
Anaplastic tumors are the bad news in oncology—the more 'primitive' a cancer cell becomes, the more dangerous it is, which seems backwards since it's actually losing complexity rather than gaining it.
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