This paper examines the metaphors used in the conceptualization of cancer both in scientific and popularization articles. To do so, the author compares the cancer metaphors found in a corpus of popularization articles on cancer (taken from the English broadsheet The Guardian) with the metaphors identified by van Rijn-van Tongeren (1997) in a corpus of oncological scientific texts. The analysis suggests that cancer metaphors vary in terms of both source domain and functions across genres. Moreover, in the popularizations metaphors were used to attract the reader’s attention and to structure the discourse in the presentation of science to the lay public.