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Genetics

Clonal and subclonal events in cancer evolution—optimizing cancer therapy

Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology volume 12, page 372 (2015)Cite this article

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Intratumour heterogeneity (ITH) is a prevalent feature in multiple cancer types and constitutes a considerable challenge to the optimization of anticancer therapies. Building on their work on the evolution of lung cancer, Charles Swanton's group has used mutations and copy-number variants from the TCGA dataset to perform a pan-cancer analysis of 2,694 tumours across nine cancer types and explore the extent of ITH, providing a census of clonal and subclonal drivers.

“One of the primary challenges of precision medicine is deciphering which driver mutations are early clonal events and which are later subclonal events—the latter being less robust drug targets due to their heterogeneous nature,” explains Nicholas McGranahan, lead author of the study. Furthermore, the identification of the mutational events and processes that drive subclonal expansions might also inform on the selection of both a diagnostic and therapeutic approach.

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References

  1. McGranahan, N. et al. Clonal status of actionable driver events and the timing of mutational processes in cancer evolution. Sci. Transl. Med. 283, 283ra54 (2015)

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  1. Alessia Errico
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Errico, A. Clonal and subclonal events in cancer evolution—optimizing cancer therapy. Nat Rev Clin Oncol 12, 372 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrclinonc.2015.87

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrclinonc.2015.87

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