Certain cells in colorectal cancer are “born to be evil.”

According to researchers from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, who published their findings in the journal PNAS, this could save treating people needlessly for benign growths. In the United States, over 1.3 million people have colorectal cancer, and approximately 4% of the population will have the disease at some point in their lifetime. Usually, cancer begins as a little growth or polyp in the colon’s or rectum’s lining. Cancer can be prevented by screening techniques that find and eliminate these gastrointestinal growths.