Genomic heterogeneity in primary colorectal carcinomas and their metastases: born bad or brought up a villain?

Progression of solid cancers, colorectal carcinomas among them, from their primaries to metastatic lesions traditionally is thought to proceed by a step-wise acquisition of and selection for genomic aberrations. To test if patterns of genomic aberrations would be consistent with this model, we studied ten colorectal carcinoma primary-metastasis pairs, nine with one liver metastasis each, and one with two metastases. Next generation targeted sequencing (50 gene panel) with samples obtained from different regions of the primaries and their metastases demonstrated 1 –11 gene mutations per lesion.
Source: Human Pathology - Category: Pathology Authors: Tags: Original contribution Source Type: research