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Comment
. 2012 Oct 31;14(5):323.
doi: 10.1186/bcr3325.

Who's driving anyway? Herculean efforts to identify the drivers of breast cancer

Ryan J Hartmaier, Nolan Priedigkeit, Adrian V Lee
Comment

Who's driving anyway? Herculean efforts to identify the drivers of breast cancer

Ryan J Hartmaier et al. Breast Cancer Res. .

Abstract

The continuing advancement of sequencing technologies has made the systematic identification of all driving somatic events in cancer a possibility. In the June 2012 issue of Nature, five papers show some significant headway in this endeavor, each a herculean effort of genome sequencing, and transcriptome and copy number analysis resulting in data on thousands of breast cancers. Integrating these massive datasets, the authors were able to further subdivide breast cancer and identify a number of novel driver genes. While the studies represent a leap forward in describing the genomics of breast cancer, and clearly highlight the tremendous diversity between tumors, the studies only scrape the surface of molecular changes in breast tumors, with more granularity to come from the study of epigenomics, single cell sequencing, and so on. The immediate importance of the data to clinical care is currently unknown, and will depend upon detailed identification and functional analysis of driver mutations.

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Comment on

  • The clonal and mutational evolution spectrum of primary triple-negative breast cancers.
    Shah SP, Roth A, Goya R, Oloumi A, Ha G, Zhao Y, Turashvili G, Ding J, Tse K, Haffari G, Bashashati A, Prentice LM, Khattra J, Burleigh A, Yap D, Bernard V, McPherson A, Shumansky K, Crisan A, Giuliany R, Heravi-Moussavi A, Rosner J, Lai D, Birol I, Varhol R, Tam A, Dhalla N, Zeng T, Ma K, Chan SK, Griffith M, Moradian A, Cheng SW, Morin GB, Watson P, Gelmon K, Chia S, Chin SF, Curtis C, Rueda OM, Pharoah PD, Damaraju S, Mackey J, Hoon K, Harkins T, Tadigotla V, Sigaroudinia M, Gascard P, Tlsty T, Costello JF, Meyer IM, Eaves CJ, Wasserman WW, Jones S, Huntsman D, Hirst M, Caldas C, Marra MA, Aparicio S. Shah SP, et al. Nature. 2012 Apr 4;486(7403):395-9. doi: 10.1038/nature10933. Nature. 2012. PMID: 22495314 Free PMC article.
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    Curtis C, Shah SP, Chin SF, Turashvili G, Rueda OM, Dunning MJ, Speed D, Lynch AG, Samarajiwa S, Yuan Y, Gräf S, Ha G, Haffari G, Bashashati A, Russell R, McKinney S; METABRIC Group; Langerød A, Green A, Provenzano E, Wishart G, Pinder S, Watson P, Markowetz F, Murphy L, Ellis I, Purushotham A, Børresen-Dale AL, Brenton JD, Tavaré S, Caldas C, Aparicio S. Curtis C, et al. Nature. 2012 Apr 18;486(7403):346-52. doi: 10.1038/nature10983. Nature. 2012. PMID: 22522925 Free PMC article.
  • Whole-genome analysis informs breast cancer response to aromatase inhibition.
    Ellis MJ, Ding L, Shen D, Luo J, Suman VJ, Wallis JW, Van Tine BA, Hoog J, Goiffon RJ, Goldstein TC, Ng S, Lin L, Crowder R, Snider J, Ballman K, Weber J, Chen K, Koboldt DC, Kandoth C, Schierding WS, McMichael JF, Miller CA, Lu C, Harris CC, McLellan MD, Wendl MC, DeSchryver K, Allred DC, Esserman L, Unzeitig G, Margenthaler J, Babiera GV, Marcom PK, Guenther JM, Leitch M, Hunt K, Olson J, Tao Y, Maher CA, Fulton LL, Fulton RS, Harrison M, Oberkfell B, Du F, Demeter R, Vickery TL, Elhammali A, Piwnica-Worms H, McDonald S, Watson M, Dooling DJ, Ota D, Chang LW, Bose R, Ley TJ, Piwnica-Worms D, Stuart JM, Wilson RK, Mardis ER. Ellis MJ, et al. Nature. 2012 Jun 10;486(7403):353-60. doi: 10.1038/nature11143. Nature. 2012. PMID: 22722193 Free PMC article.
  • The landscape of cancer genes and mutational processes in breast cancer.
    Stephens PJ, Tarpey PS, Davies H, Van Loo P, Greenman C, Wedge DC, Nik-Zainal S, Martin S, Varela I, Bignell GR, Yates LR, Papaemmanuil E, Beare D, Butler A, Cheverton A, Gamble J, Hinton J, Jia M, Jayakumar A, Jones D, Latimer C, Lau KW, McLaren S, McBride DJ, Menzies A, Mudie L, Raine K, Rad R, Chapman MS, Teague J, Easton D, Langerød A; Oslo Breast Cancer Consortium (OSBREAC); Lee MT, Shen CY, Tee BT, Huimin BW, Broeks A, Vargas AC, Turashvili G, Martens J, Fatima A, Miron P, Chin SF, Thomas G, Boyault S, Mariani O, Lakhani SR, van de Vijver M, van 't Veer L, Foekens J, Desmedt C, Sotiriou C, Tutt A, Caldas C, Reis-Filho JS, Aparicio SA, Salomon AV, Børresen-Dale AL, Richardson AL, Campbell PJ, Futreal PA, Stratton MR. Stephens PJ, et al. Nature. 2012 May 16;486(7403):400-4. doi: 10.1038/nature11017. Nature. 2012. PMID: 22722201 Free PMC article.
  • Sequence analysis of mutations and translocations across breast cancer subtypes.
    Banerji S, Cibulskis K, Rangel-Escareno C, Brown KK, Carter SL, Frederick AM, Lawrence MS, Sivachenko AY, Sougnez C, Zou L, Cortes ML, Fernandez-Lopez JC, Peng S, Ardlie KG, Auclair D, Bautista-Piña V, Duke F, Francis J, Jung J, Maffuz-Aziz A, Onofrio RC, Parkin M, Pho NH, Quintanar-Jurado V, Ramos AH, Rebollar-Vega R, Rodriguez-Cuevas S, Romero-Cordoba SL, Schumacher SE, Stransky N, Thompson KM, Uribe-Figueroa L, Baselga J, Beroukhim R, Polyak K, Sgroi DC, Richardson AL, Jimenez-Sanchez G, Lander ES, Gabriel SB, Garraway LA, Golub TR, Melendez-Zajgla J, Toker A, Getz G, Hidalgo-Miranda A, Meyerson M. Banerji S, et al. Nature. 2012 Jun 20;486(7403):405-9. doi: 10.1038/nature11154. Nature. 2012. PMID: 22722202 Free PMC article.

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