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Intratumoral genome diversity parallels progression and predicts outcome in pediatric cancer.

Author

Summary, in English

Genetic differences among neoplastic cells within the same tumour have been proposed to drive cancer progression and treatment failure. Whether data on intratumoral diversity can be used to predict clinical outcome remains unclear. We here address this issue by quantifying genetic intratumoral diversity in a set of chemotherapy-treated childhood tumours. By analysis of multiple tumour samples from seven patients we demonstrate intratumoral diversity in all patients analysed after chemotherapy, typically presenting as multiple clones within a single millimetre-sized tumour sample (microdiversity). We show that microdiversity often acts as the foundation for further genome evolution in metastases. In addition, we find that microdiversity predicts poor cancer-specific survival (60%; P=0.009), independent of other risk factors, in a cohort of 44 patients with chemotherapy-treated childhood kidney cancer. Survival was 100% for patients lacking microdiversity. Thus, intratumoral genetic diversity is common in childhood cancers after chemotherapy and may be an important factor behind treatment failure.

Publishing year

2015

Language

English

Publication/Series

Nature Communications

Volume

6

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Nature Publishing Group

Topic

  • Cancer and Oncology
  • Medical Genetics
  • Pediatrics

Status

Published

Research group

  • Pathways of cancer cell evolution
  • Molecular Pediatric Oncology

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 2041-1723