Focus on cancer technology
The foremost obstacle is simply the sheer complexity and protean nature of tumor biology. Increasing appreciation of the scale of genetic, epigenetic and phenotypic heterogeneity in different cancers [News & Views,
p. 620
] is recasting the way the field is approaching the design of experimental therapies and diagnostics. [Feature,
p. 604
] State-of-the-art tools for analyzing single cells are revealing the diversity of point mutations, fusions, segmental duplications, copy number variants and epigenetic abnormalities within a single tumor. Such methods do not yet allow whole-genome sequence analysis at the single-cell level, which will require the introduction of more sophisticated methods of data interpretation. [Review,
p. 639
] Even so, they allow the sampling of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the peripheral blood, and detailed studies of small numbers of CTCs with a new generation of capture devices are bringing us closer to a non-invasive capability of profiling cancers as they progress or respond to treatment. [News Feature,
p. 578
]
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution