More rarely, the pancreas can be afflicted by cancer. Like all organs, the pancreas is made up of individual living cells. There are several different types of cells in the pancreas to accomplish it's functions. The these cells divided rapidly while the pancreas was growing in the womb, childhood and through puberty. As adults, they only divide rarely to replace old, dying cells or injured ones.
Pancreas cancer begins in a single cell.
A change occurs in the genes of this cell, which loses it's controls to prevent haphazard division. The abnormal cell starts dividing rapidly, makes millions and billions of copies of itself. A tumor simply means a swelling, and is not necessarily cancerous. Malignant tumors can spread to any area of the body, the process of distant spread is called metastasis. The cancer at first grows in it's local area and interferes with the pancreas' functions.