What's in a name? Molecular subclassification of sarcomas creates fresh challenges

Abstract

This commentary addresses the issue of the classification of sarcomas in the article written by Watson and colleagues published recently in this journal. The article delves into the molecular characterization and distinct phenotypes of some recently described entities (e.g. BCOR-rearranged sarcomas, CIC-fused sarcomas) and describes new groups with common characteristics. This commentary focuses on several questions raised in the article, such as what makes a group of sarcomas become a clinical entity, which should be the main driver of sarcoma classification, how the classification of small round cell sarcomas is expected to evolve and how high-throughput techniques could be applied to sarcoma diagnosis in the short term. Copyright © 2018 Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: gene fusion; sarcoma; transcriptomics; tumor classification.