What is meant by tumor heterogeneity?
Definition. Tumour heterogeneity describes differences between tumours of the same type in different patients, and between cancer cells within a tumour. Both can lead to different responses to therapy.
What is tumor clonality?
The purpose of this review is to discuss the different methods of clonality determination, in particular those based on DNA analysis, and to illustrate their use in human tumors. A clonal population of cells is defined as those cells arising from the mitotic division of a single somatic cell (1).
Does heterogeneous mean cancer?
Cancer is a heterogeneous disease. Practically from the moment pathologists first looked at human cancers under the microscope, they saw that differing histologic appearances could define distinct subtypes of cancers from the same primary site of origin.
Are tumors homogeneous?
Tumor homogeneity refers to the cellular populations bearing the same or similar genetic or epigenetic characters within the same lesion or in different lesions of the same patient.
What causes tumor heterogeneity?
To a substantial extent, this heterogeneity might be attributed to morphological and epigenetic plasticity, but there is also strong evidence for the co-existence of genetically divergent tumor cell clones within tumors.
What does the term heterogeneity mean?
: the quality or state of consisting of dissimilar or diverse elements : the quality or state of being heterogeneous cultural heterogeneity.
What is meant by clonality?
Clonality implies the state of a cell or a substance being derived from one source or the other. Thus there are terms like polyclonal—derived from many clones; oligoclonal—derived from a few clones; and monoclonal—derived from one clone.
Why are tumors heterogeneous?
Intertumoural heterogeneity, which refers to heterogeneity between patients harbouring tumours of the same histological type, has long been recognized and is believed to result from patient-specific factors including germline genetic variations, differences in somatic mutation profile, and environmental factors.
Can a benign tumor be heterogeneous?
In contrast, 91 of the 164 benign lesions (56%) were heterogeneous on T2WI. Univariate analysis showed that depth, size and heterogeneity on T2WI differed significantly between benign and malignant masses.
What is the meaning of heterogeneously?
: consisting of dissimilar or diverse ingredients or constituents : mixed an ethnically heterogeneous population.
What is a heterogeneous tumor?
Heterogeneous tumors are classed as spatial and temporal types, dependent on whether nonuniform distribution of cancer cells is dispersed across and within disease sites; or whether there is cell variation over time. Tumor heterogeneity is currently analyzed by examining bulk specimens, but it is limited due to admixture…
What is heterogeneous breast cancer?
Breast cancer is a heterogeneous group of neoplasms originating from the epithelial cells lining the milk ducts. Breast tumor heterogeneity has been noted in histology and clinical outcome for a long time, and these differences have served as the basis for disease classification.
What is clonal heterogeneity?
Clonal heterogeneity in plasma cell myeloma is the foundation of work in the area of clonal tiding. Clonal tiding has been described in plasma cell myeloma with different clones competing for dominance dependent on variable resistance to chemotherapy.
Can stem cells cause cancer?
The concept that stem cells could cause cancer comes from embryonic stem cell (ESC) research. Because stem cells taken from a growing embryo are tasked with building a person, they can sometimes still try to build a person when used to treat a disease.
