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  • Intratumor heterogeneity in...
    Zhang, Jianjun; Fujimoto, Junya; Zhang, Jianhua; Wedge, David C.; Song, Xingzhi; Zhang, Jiexin; Seth, Sahil; Chow, Chi-Wan; Cao, Yu; Gumbs, Curtis; Gold, Kathryn A.; Kalhor, Neda; Little, Latasha; Mahadeshwar, Harshad; Moran, Cesar; Protopopov, Alexei; Sun, Huandong; Tang, Jiabin; Wu, Xifeng; Ye, Yuanqing; William, William N.; Lee, J. Jack; Heymach, John V.; Hong, Waun Ki; Swisher, Stephen; Wistuba, Ignacio I.; Futreal, P. Andrew

    Science, 10/2014, Volume: 346, Issue: 6206
    Journal Article

    Cancers are composed of populations of cells with distinct molecular and phenotypic features, a phenomenon termed intratumor heterogeneity (ITH). ITH in lung cancers has not been well studied. We applied multiregion whole-exome sequencing (WES) on 11 localized lung adenocarcinomas. All tumors showed clear evidence of ITH. On average, 76% of all mutations and 20 out of 21 known cancer gene mutations were identified in all regions of individual tumors, which suggested that single-region sequencing may be adequate to identify the majority of known cancer gene mutations in localized lung adenocarcinomas. With a median follow-up of 21 months after surgery, three patients have relapsed, and all three patients had significantly larger fractions of subclonal mutations in their primary tumors than patients without relapse. These data indicate that a larger subclonal mutation fraction may be associated with increased likelihood of postsurgical relapse in patients with localized lung adenocarcinomas.