A recent study has demonstrated that serial profiling of resistance mutations in cell-free DNA (cfDNA) collected from the blood of patients with colorectal cancer can be used to track tumour evolution throughout the therapeutic course. This approach has the potential to inform personalized medicine by enabling dynamic adaptation of therapy.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Relevant articles
Open Access articles citing this article.
-
Current challenges in metastasis research and future innovation for clinical translation
Clinical & Experimental Metastasis Open Access 24 January 2022
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$209.00 per year
only $17.42 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
References
Misale, S., Di Nicolantonio, F., Sartore-Bianchi, A., Siena, S. & Bardelli, A. Resistance to anti-EGFR therapy in colorectal cancer: from heterogeneity to convergent evolution. Cancer Discov. 4, 1269–1280 (2014).
Esposito, C. et al. The S492R EGFR ectodomain mutation is never detected in KRAS wild-type colorectal carcinoma before exposure to EGFR monoclonal antibodies. Cancer Biol. Ther. 14, 1143–1146 (2013).
Gerlinger, M. et al. Genomic architecture and evolution of clear cell renal cell carcinomas defined by multiregion sequencing. Nat. Genet. 46, 225–233 (2014).
Siravegna, G. et al. Clonal evolution and resistance to EGFR blockade in the blood of colorectal cancer patients. Nat. Med. 21, 795–801 (2015).
Diehl, F. et al. Detection and quantification of mutations in the plasma of patients with colorectal tumors. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 102, 16368–16373 (2005).
Diehl, F. et al. Circulating mutant DNA to assess tumor dynamics. Nat. Med. 14, 985–990 (2008).
Tie, J. et al. Circulating tumor DNA as an early marker of therapeutic response in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer. Ann. Oncol. 26, 1715–1722 (2015).
Misale, S. et al. Emergence of KRAS mutations and acquired resistance to anti-EGFR therapy in colorectal cancer. Nature 486, 532–536 (2012).
Diaz, L. A. Jr et al. The molecular evolution of acquired resistance to targeted EGFR blockade in colorectal cancers. Nature 486, 537–540 (2012).
Morelli, M. P. et al. Characterizing the patterns of clonal selection in circulating tumor DNA from patients with colorectal cancer refractory to anti-EGFR treatment. Ann. Oncol. 26, 731–736 (2015).
Tougeron, D. et al. Effect of low-frequency KRAS mutations on the response to anti-EGFR therapy in metastatic colorectal cancer. Ann. Oncol. 24, 1267–1273 (2013).
Turajlic, S., McGranahan, N. & Swanton, C. Inferring mutational timing and reconstructing tumour evolutionary histories. Biochim. Biophys. Acta 1855, 264–275 (2015).
Gatenby, R. A., Silva, A. S., Gillies, R. J. & Frieden, B. R. Adaptive therapy. Cancer Res. 69, 4894–4903 (2009).
Jamal-Hanjani, M. et al. Tracking genomic cancer evolution for precision medicine: the lung TRACERx study. PLoS Biol. 12, e1001906 (2014).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
PowerPoint slides
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Turajlic, S., Swanton, C. Tracking tumour evolution through liquid biopsy. Nat Rev Clin Oncol 12, 565–566 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrclinonc.2015.153
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrclinonc.2015.153
This article is cited by
-
Current challenges in metastasis research and future innovation for clinical translation
Clinical & Experimental Metastasis (2022)
