Evolution after tumour spread

摘要

The spread of a primary tumour to secondary sites in the body is a key step in the development of many cancers, and treatment of these secondary metastatic tumours represents one of the foremost challenges in oncology. On page 529 of this issue, Wu et al.~1 describe two new mouse strains that serve as models of metastasis in the childhood brain cancer medulloblastoma~*. In the mice, primary and metastatic tumours seem to occupy two genetically distinct compartments', which arise from divergent DNA-sequence mutations that occur after metastasis. The authors also detect similar differences in human medulloblastoma tumours - a finding that may influence the development of anticancer therapies.