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Tumour heterogeneity

The cancer kaleidoscope

Nature Reviews Cancer volume 14, pages 151–152 (2014)Cite this article

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In a paper published in Cell Reports, the authors used immunofluorescence in situ hybridization on biopsies taken from 47 patients before and after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. All major breast cancer subtypes (luminal A, luminal B, HER2 (also known as ERBB2)-positive (HER2+) and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC)) were represented in this patient sample. Bacterial artificial chromosomes (BACs) containing probes for 8q24.3 (amplification of 8q24 is common to all breast cancer subtypes); 16p13 (altered in luminal tumours); 20q13 (altered in HER2+ tumours); and 10p13 (altered in TNBC), as well as corresponding chromosomal centromeric probes (CEPs), were used to determine changes in the copy number of whole and specific chromosomal regions. Phenotypic heterogeneity was assessed using CD44 and CD24 immunofluorescence, as expression of these markers is thought to identify cancer cells that have distinct molecular and cellular properties. BAC and CEP signals were counted in 100 tumour cells of each of the four phenotypes (CD24+CD44+, CD24−CD44+, CD24+CD44− and CD24−CD44−) in each sample. These counts were then used to calculate genetic and phenotypic diversity based on the Shannon and Simpson indices of diversity.

The authors found that intratumour cellular genetic diversity was tumour subtype specific and was relatively stable before and after treatment in tumours that had either a partial or no response to drug treatment. Interestingly, a lower genetic diversity before treatment was associated with a pathological complete response. By comparison, phenotypic diversity in each tumour varied between pretreatment and post-treatment samples and might reflect the susceptibility of cancer cells with different rates of proliferation to chemotherapy.

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References

  1. Almendro, V. et al. Inference of tumor evolution during chemotherapy by computational modeling and in situ analysis of genetic and phenotypic cellular diversity. Cell Rep. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2013.12.041 (2014)

  2. Almendro, V. et al. Genetic and phenotypic diversity in breast tumor metastases. Cancer Res. http://dx.doi.org/10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-13-2357-T (2014)

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  1. Nicola McCarthy
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McCarthy, N. The cancer kaleidoscope. Nat Rev Cancer 14, 151–152 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc3683

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