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Cancer chromosomal instability: therapeutic and diagnostic challenges
Author(s) -
McGranahan Nicholas,
Burrell Rebecca A,
Endesfelder David,
Novelli Marco R,
Swanton Charles
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
embo reports
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.584
H-Index - 184
eISSN - 1469-3178
pISSN - 1469-221X
DOI - 10.1038/embor.2012.61
Subject(s) - chromosome instability , aneuploidy , genome instability , cancer , adaptation (eye) , biology , drug resistance , oncology , medicine , bioinformatics , genetics , gene , dna , chromosome , dna damage , neuroscience
Chromosomal instability (CIN)—which is a high rate of loss or gain of whole or parts of chromosomes—is a characteristic of most human cancers and a cause of tumour aneuploidy and intra‐tumour heterogeneity. CIN is associated with poor patient outcome and drug resistance, which could be mediated by evolutionary adaptation fostered by intra‐tumour heterogeneity. In this review, we discuss the clinical consequences of CIN and the challenges inherent to its measurement in tumour specimens. The relationship between CIN and prognosis supports assessment of CIN status in the clinical setting and suggests that stratifying tumours according to levels of CIN could facilitate clinical risk assessment.