Reply to Duesberg: Stability of peritriploid and triploid states in neoplastic and nonneoplastic cells

We thank P. H. Duesberg for his interesting comments (1) on our recently published report that aneuploidy in itself does not cause chromosomal instability (2). The topic of aneuploidy in cancer cells has been surprisingly little debated publicly, despite the fact that it is a prevalent phenomenon that remains enigmatic from many viewpoints. We welcome this opportunity to discuss our data further, with a particular focus on chromosomal instability at triploid and near-triploid levels. P. H. Duesberg is indeed correct that in our paper (2) there was a slight trend of increased aneusomy index (AI) in the group of aneuploidy syndromes compared with controls. However, …