Untangling the web of intratumour heterogeneity

Zheqi Li; Marco Seehawer; Kornelia Polyak

doi:10.1038/s41556-022-00969-x

Untangling the web of intratumour heterogeneity

Nat Cell Biol. 2022 Aug;24(8):1192-1201. doi: 10.1038/s41556-022-00969-x. Epub 2022 Aug 8.

Authors

Zheqi Li^#^{1

2

3}, Marco Seehawer^#^{1

2

3}, Kornelia Polyak^{4

5

6}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Medical Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA.
² Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
³ Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
⁴ Department of Medical Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA. [email protected].
⁵ Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA. [email protected].
⁶ Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. [email protected].

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 35941364
DOI: 10.1038/s41556-022-00969-x

Abstract

Intratumour heterogeneity (ITH) is a hallmark of cancer that drives tumour evolution and disease progression. Technological and computational advances have enabled us to assess ITH at unprecedented depths, yet this accumulating knowledge has not had a substantial clinical impact. This is in part due to a limited understanding of the functional relevance of ITH and the inadequacy of preclinical experimental models to reproduce it. Here, we discuss progress made in these areas and illuminate future directions.

Publication types

Review
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

Humans
Neoplasms* / genetics
Neoplasms* / pathology

Grants and funding

R35 CA197623/CA/NCI NIH HHS/United States