Definition of "premalignant" []

• Precancerous. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Colon cancer in humans also underwent graded and discrete changes in its progression, from a noninvasive premalignant lesion called an adenoma to the highly invasive terminal stage called an invasive carcinoma."
• "Colon cancers were detected at earlier and earlier stages in their evolution, often in the premalignant state, and treated with relatively minor surgeries."
• "Decades before cervical cancer evolved into its fiercely invasive incarnation, whorls of noninvasive premalignant cells could be observed in the tissue, beginning their first steps in the grisly march toward cancer."