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Huge whole-genome study of human metastatic cancers

A better understanding of the genetic changes that enable cancers to spread is crucial. A comprehensive study of whole-genome sequences from metastatic cancer will help researchers to achieve this goal.
  1. Jillian F. Wise

    1. Jillian F. Wise is at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and Department of Pathology, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, Massachusetts 02129, USA, at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in the Department of Cancer Immunology, Institute for Cancer Research, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.

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  2. Michael S. Lawrence

    1. Michael S. Lawrence is at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and Department of Pathology, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, Massachusetts 02129, USA, and at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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The major cause of cancer-related deaths is the spread of cancer cells from their primary site to other parts of the body1. This spreading process, known as metastasis, typically involves cellular stressors and environmental shocks that induce dramatic changes in cancer cells. One such change is a fierce resistance to current therapies, which means that new ways to combat metastatic disease are urgently needed. Writing in Nature, Priestley et al.2 use whole-genome sequencing (WGS) to illuminate the genomic changes that underpin metastasis in 22 types of solid tumour. Although previous studies3,4 have unearthed some hints of such changes, this is perhaps the first pan-cancer metastasis study of its size to exploit the power of WGS.

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Nature 575, 60-61 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03123-0

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 25 October 2019: The name of the first author of the Nature paper under discussion (ref. 2) was misspelt. This has now been corrected.

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