Genetic and Phenotypic Diversification of Heterogeneous Tumor Populations

Abstract

Chemotherapy is the most commonly prescribed treatment for patients with aggressive and lethal triple negative breast cancers (TNBCs), which often develop chemoresistance. A recent study combined single nucleus sequencing, single cell RNA sequencing, and evolutionary biology to understand how tumor cells use genetic and phenotypic diversity to evade the selective pressures of neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

Keywords: chemotherapy; clonal tumor cell subpopulations; intratumoral heterogeneity; pathological complete response; transcriptional reprogramming; triple negative breast cancer.