Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have developed a new cheap method that can identify highly heterogeneous tumors that tend to be very aggressive, and therefore need to be treated more aggressively. The technique is presented in the scientific journal Nature Communications.
A common feature of cancer cells is alterations in the number of copies in which each chromosome or gene is present in the genome – a phenomenon known as copy number alterations or CNAs. Within the same tumor, cells belonging to different anatomical parts of the tumor may carry different CNAs. Tumors with many CNAs are typically very aggressive and tend to reform more often, even after harsh treatments.
