Cancer is a disease of cellular evolution. For this cellular evolution to take place, a population of cells must contain functional heterogeneity and an assessment of this heterogeneity in the form of natural selection. Cancer cells from advanced mal...
Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) monitoring, while sufficiently advanced to reflect tumor evolution in real time and inform cancer diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis, mainly relies on DNA that originates from cell death via apoptosis or necrosis. In so...
Malignant tumors behave dynamically as cell communities governed by ecological principles. Massive sequencing tools are unveiling the true dimension of the heterogeneity of these communities along their evolution in most human neoplasms, clear cell r...
Background/Objectives: Constructing a comprehensive spatiotemporal map of tumor heterogeneity is essential for understanding tumor evolution, with copy number variation (CNV) being a significant feature. Existing studies often rely on tools originall...
Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) belongs to the types of cancer with the highest lethality. It is also remarkably chemoresistant to the few available cytotoxic therapeutic options. PDAC is characterized by limited mutational heterogeneity of t...
Surgical resection remains a cornerstone in the multidisciplinary management of central nervous system (CNS) tumors, particularly diffuse gliomas. Traditionally, the role of surgery has been evaluated primarily through quantitative metrics such as ex...
Many genetic markers are known to distinguish tumor cells from normal. Genetic lesions found at disease onset often belong to a predominant tumor clone, and further observation makes it possible to assess the fate of this clone during therapy. Howeve...
Tumor heterogeneity is a significant factor influencing cancer treatment effectiveness and can arise from genetic, epigenetic, and phenotypic variations among cancer cells. Understanding how tumor heterogeneity impacts tumor evolution and therapy res...
Macrophages are widely distributed in tissues and function in homeostasis. During cancer development, tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) dominatingly support disease progression and resistance to therapy by promoting tumor proliferation, angiogenesi...
Minimization of the surgical approaches to spinal extradural metastases resection and stabilization was advocated by the 2012 Oncological Guidelines for Spinal Metastases Management. Minimally invasive approaches to spine oncology surgery (MISS) are...
Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common yet uniformly fatal adult brain cancer. Intra-tumoral molecular and cellular heterogeneities are major contributory factors to therapeutic refractoriness and futility in GBM. Molecular heterogeneity is represente...
Liquid biopsy of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) is proposed as a potential method for the early detection of breast cancer (BC) metastases and following the clonal evolution of BC. Though the use of liquid biopsy is a widely discussed topic in the field, only...
Purpose: There is a clinical need to better non-invasively characterize the tumor microenvironment in order to reveal evidence of early tumor response to therapy and to better understand therapeutic response. The goals of this work are first to compa...
Melanoma is an aggressive neoplasia issued from the malignant transformation of melanocytes, the pigment-generating cells of the skin. It is responsible for about 75% of deaths due to skin cancers. Melanoma is a phenotypically and molecularly heterog...
A squamous odontogenic tumor (SOT) is an epithelial locally benign neoplasia derived from the periodontium of the jaws. It is considered a lesion of low incidence. Predominantly, it affects the mandible, although both jaw bones may be involved. Here,...
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) provide an accessible tool for investigating tumor heterogeneity and cell populations with metastatic potential. Although an in-depth molecular investigation is limited by the extremely low CTC count in circulation, sig...
Background: Cancer remains a global health challenge, characterized not just by uncontrolled cell proliferation but also by the complex metabolic reprogramming that underlies its development and progression. Objectives: This review delves into the in...
Genetic dynamics underlying cancer progression are largely unknown and several genes involved in highly prevalent illnesses (e.g., hypertension, obesity, and diabetes) strongly concur to cancer phenotype heterogeneity. To study genotype-phenotype rel...
Purpose: To assess the value of whole blood transcriptome data from liquid biopsy (lbx) in recurrent high-grade glioma (rHGG) patients for longitudinal molecular monitoring of tumor evolution under carbon ion irradiation (CIR). Methods: Whole blood t...
Recurrent high-grade glioma (HGG) remains incurable with inevitable evolution of resistance and high inter-patient heterogeneity in time to progression (TTP). Here, we evaluate if early tumor volume response dynamics can calibrate a mathematical mode...
Rapid diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring of aggressive diseases such as glioblastoma can improve patient survival by providing physicians the time to optimally deliver treatment. This research tested whether metabolic imaging with hyperpolarized MR...
Molecular alterations drive cancer initiation and evolution during development and in response to therapy. Radiotherapy is one of the most commonly employed cancer treatment modalities, but radiobiologic approaches for personalizing therapy based on...
The evolutionary history of multiple myeloma (MM) includes malignant transformation, followed by progression to pre-malignant stages and overt malignancy, ultimately leading to more aggressive and resistant forms. Over the past decade, large effort h...
Dispersal routes of metastatic cells are not medically detected or even visible. A molecular evolutionary analysis of tumor variation provides a way to retrospectively infer metastatic migration histories and answer questions such as whether the majo...
Ovarian cancer (OC) is a highly heterogeneous malignancy, often characterized by complex genomic alterations that drive tumor progression and therapy resistance. In this paper, we report a novel de novo BRCA2 germline variant NM_000059.3:c.(8693_8695...
This review summarizes the knowledge about retrogenes in the context of cancer and evolution. The retroposition, in which the processed mRNA from parental genes undergoes reverse transcription and the resulting cDNA is integrated back into the genome...
Plasma cell dyscrasias are a heterogeneous group of diseases characterized by the expansion of bone marrow plasma cells. Malignant transformation of plasma cells depends on the continuity of events resulting in a sequence of well-defined disease stag...
The history of modern oncology started around eighty years ago with the introduction of cytotoxic agents such as nitrogen mustard into the clinic, followed by multi-agent chemotherapy protocols. Early success in radiation therapy in Hodgkin lymphoma...
Resistance to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) represents a major challenge for the effective treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Tumor heterogeneity has been identified as an important mechanism of treatment resistance in cancer and...
Surgery has contributed to unveil a tumor behavior that is difficult to reconcile with the models of tumorigenesis based on gradualism. The postsurgical patterns of progression include unexpected features such as distant interactions and variable rhy...
A theory of the evolutionary role of hereditary tumors, or the carcino-evo-devo theory, is being developed. The main hypothesis of the theory, the hypothesis of evolution by tumor neofunctionalization, posits that hereditary tumors provided additiona...
Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is a common and aggressive malignancy, with hitherto dismal clinical outcome. Genomic analyses of patient samples reveal a complex heterogeneous landscape for ESCC, which presents in both intertumor and intra...
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a global health concern and a leading cause of death worldwide. The disease’s course and response to treatment are significantly influenced by its heterogeneity, both within a single lesion and between primary and met...
The Genomics of Malignant Peripheral Nerve Sheath Tumor (GeM) Consortium is an international collaboration focusing on multi-omic analysis of malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors (MPNSTs), the most aggressive tumor associated with neurofibromatos...
Tumor heterogeneity encompasses genetic, epigenetic, and phenotypic diversity, impacting treatment response and resistance. Spatial heterogeneity occurs both inter- and intra-lesionally, while temporal heterogeneity results from clonal evolution. Hig...
Brain Tumor Segmentation (BraTS) challenges have significantly advanced research in brain tumor segmentation and related medical imaging tasks. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the BraTS datasets from 2012 to 2024, examining their evolut...
In triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), only 30% of patients treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy achieve a pathological complete response after treatment and more than 90% die due to metastasis formation. The diverse clinical responses and metasta...
A tumor is a complex tissue comprised of heterogeneous cell subpopulations which exhibit substantial diversity at morphological, genetic and epigenetic levels. Under the selective pressure of cancer therapies, a minor treatment-resistant subpopulatio...
Adult-type diffusely infiltrating gliomas, of which glioblastoma is the most common and aggressive, almost always recur after treatment and are fatal. Improved understanding of therapy-driven tumor evolution and acquired therapy resistance in gliomas...
Epithelial ovarian cancer is the deadliest gynecologic cancer, due in large part to recurrent tumors. Recurrences tend to have metastasized, mainly in the peritoneal cavity and developed resistance to the first line chemotherapy. Key to the progressi...
Melanoma is a highly aggressive type of skin cancer. Metastatic melanoma tumors have historically featured a particularly poor prognosis and have often been considered incurable. Recent advances in targeted therapeutic interventions have radically ch...
Data indicate that many driver alterations from the primary tumor of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) are predominantly shared across all metastases; however, disseminating cells may also acquire a new genetic landscape across their journey. By com...
Multiple myeloma (MM) is a complex and heterogeneous hematologic malignancy characterized by clonal evolution, genetic instability, and interactions with a supportive tumor microenvironment. These factors contribute to treatment resistance, disease p...
During the second half of the twentieth century, oncology adopted a tumor-centric approach to cancer treatment, focusing primarily on the tumor cell to identify new therapeutic targets [...]
Precision medicine aims to tailor treatments to individual patients based on their unique characteristics and disease pathophysiology. This study presents a novel mathematical model of breast tumor growth, specifically focusing on implanted breast tu...
Tumor heterogeneity results in more than 50% of hypermutated cancers failing to respond to standard immunotherapy. There are numerous challenges in terms of drug resistance, therapeutic strategies, and biomarkers in immunotherapy. In this study, we a...
Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) is a complex condition caused by the destruction of pancreatic beta cells by autoimmune mechanisms. As a result, insulin deficiency and subsequent hyperglycemia occur. The aim of the present study is to investigate the...
Longitudinal tumor sequencing of recurrent bladder cancer (BC) can facilitate the investigation of BC progression-associated genomic and transcriptomic alterations. In this study, we analyzed 18 tumor specimens including distant and locoregional meta...
Evolutionary dynamics can be used to control cancers when a cure is not clinically considered to be achievable. Understanding Darwinian intratumoral interactions of microenvironmental selection forces can be used to steer tumor progression towards a...
Neuroblastoma (NB) is the most common extra-cranial malignancy in preschool children. To portray the genetic landscape of an overly aggressive NB leading to a rapid clinical progression of the disease, tumor DNA collected pre- and post-treatment has...
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