NO WONDER cancer is such a challenge to treat: a genetic analysis of advanced kidney cancer has shown that mutations can vary across the same tumour. This finding dashes hopes of tailoring treatment for an individual based on the mutations in a single biopsy.
Charles Swanton at Cancer Research UK in London and colleagues analysed kidney tumours from four people and found that around two-thirds of genetic mutations in the same tumour differed from one biopsy to the next.
The prognosis for each person was sometimes good and at other times bad depending on which part of the tumour was sampled.
It could explain why drugs that target specific mutations aren't always successful, says Swanton, whose results appear this week in The New England Journal of Medicine, vol 366, p 883.
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