Featured Article Academic Journal Main Category: Cancer / Oncology Also Included In: Genetics;Urology / Nephrology Article Date: 08 Mar 2012 - 2:00 PST
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Professor Peter Johnson, chief clinician at Cancer Research UK said in a statement that the study highlights "important differences that exist within tumours and suggest a way to improve the success rate of personalised cancer medicines".
The lead author of the study is Professor Charles Swanton, who works at Cancer Research UK's London Research Institute and the UCL Cancer Institute. He and his colleagues analyzed the genetic variation among different regions of the same cancer tumor, using samples donated by patients with advanced kidney cancer.
This is the first time genome-wide analysis has been used for this.
Swanton told the press that scientists have known for a while that a tumor is a "patchwork" of faults, but this is the first time, thanks to cutting edge genomic sequencing technology, scientists have been able to map the genetic landscape of a tumor in such "exquisite detail".
For the study, he and his colleagues compared the genetic variations in samples taken from different regions of four separate kidney tumors. They also took samples from other organs the cancer had spread to.
They found that about two thirds of the genetic faults in a tumor were not repeated across other biopsy samples from the same tumor.
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Tumor's Genetic Identity Not Revealed By Single Biopsy