Abstract
Oncology and cancer research are based on the principle that cancers are regarded as organ- and tissue-specific diseases. One of the central aspects of histopathological tumor diagnostics is to determine the tumor’s anatomic origin and other morphological features that are the basis for selecting the appropriate therapy. Similarly, research programs are usually also focused on particular cancer entities. However, mutational tumor profiling performed with next-generation-sequencing techniques has made it possible to analyze whether this anatomical tumor classification is valid also on the genetic level. Here, we review recent evidence that substantial similarities exist among tumors across classical anatomic cancer entities on the mutational level. We furthermore discuss the implications of these complex mutational profiles and similarity patterns across cancers for diagnostics, research, and clinical study design and explain why the comprehensive genomic data should be complemented by functional proteomic analyses.
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Acknowledgement
F.K. is supported as an Einstein Junior Fellow by the Einstein Foundations Berlin and the Human Frontier Science Program Organization as a Young Investigator. The work reviewed here has partly been previously published by the author in form of primary research articles and in conference proceedings in German [13, 14, 23].
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Klauschen, F., Stenzinger, A., Heim, D. (2015). Mutational Similarities Across Cancers: Implications for Research, Diagnostics, and Personalized Therapy Design. In: Wu, W., Choudhry, H. (eds) Next Generation Sequencing in Cancer Research, Volume 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15811-2_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15811-2_4
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