Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2021 Feb;27(2):212-224.
doi: 10.1038/s41591-021-01233-9. Epub 2021 Feb 11.

Intratumoral heterogeneity in cancer progression and response to immunotherapy

Ilio Vitale  1   2 , Efrat Shema  3 , Sherene Loi  4   5 , Lorenzo Galluzzi  6   7   8   9   10
Affiliations
Review

Intratumoral heterogeneity in cancer progression and response to immunotherapy

Ilio Vitale et al. Nat Med. 2021 Feb.

Abstract

Most (if not all) tumors emerge and progress under a strong evolutionary pressure imposed by trophic, metabolic, immunological, and therapeutic factors. The relative impact of these factors on tumor evolution changes over space and time, ultimately favoring the establishment of a neoplastic microenvironment that exhibits considerable genetic, phenotypic, and behavioral heterogeneity in all its components. Here, we discuss the main sources of intratumoral heterogeneity and its impact on the natural history of the disease, including sensitivity to treatment, as we delineate potential strategies to target such a detrimental feature of aggressive malignancies.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Vitale, I. et al. Mutational and antigenic landscape in tumor progression and cancer immunotherapy. Trends Cell Biol. 29, 396–416 (2019). - PubMed - DOI
    1. Wang, J. et al. Clonal evolution of glioblastoma under therapy. Nat. Genet. 48, 768–776 (2016). - PubMed - PMC - DOI
    1. Teixeira, V. H. et al. Deciphering the genomic, epigenomic, and transcriptomic landscapes of pre-invasive lung cancer lesions. Nat. Med. 25, 517–525 (2019). - PubMed - DOI
    1. Sharma, A. et al. Non-genetic intra-tumor heterogeneity is a major predictor of phenotypic heterogeneity and ongoing evolutionary dynamics in lung tumors. Cell Rep. 29, 2164–2174(2019). - PubMed - PMC - DOI
    1. van Galen, P. et al. Single-cell RNA-seq reveals AML hierarchies relevant to disease progression and immunity. Cell 176, 1265–1281(2019). - PubMed - PMC - DOI

Publication types

Substances