driver mutations tagged posts

Approximate number of driver mutations needed to cause cancer by area of the body

The results show the number of mutations driving cancer varies considerably across different cancer types. For the first time, scientists have provided unbiased estimates of the number of mutations needed for cancers to develop, in a study of more than 7,500 tumours across 29 cancer types. Researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and their collaborators adapted a technique from the field of evolution to confirm that, on average, one to ten driver mutations are needed for cancer to emerge.

In the future, such approaches could be used in the clinic to identify which few mutations in an individual patient are driving his or her cancer, from amongst the thousands of mutations present...

This is a three-dimensional model of a tumor showing cell types in varying colors. Credit: Bartek Waclaw and Martin Nowak

The new model explains why cancer cells have a surprising number of genetic mutations in common, how driver mutations spread through the whole tumor and how drug resistance evolves. “Previously, we and others have mostly used non-spatial models to study cancer evolution,” Nowak said. “But those models do not describe the spatial characteristics of solid tumors. Now, for the first time, we have a computational model that can do that.”

A key insight of the new model, Nowak said, is the ability for cells to migrate locally. “Cellular mobility makes cancers grow fast, and it makes cancers homogenous in the sense that cancer cells share a common set of mutations...