Wednesday, 14th December, 2016, 12:00

"Intratumoral evolution of breast cancer in response to therapy"

Population heterogeneity within tumors is essential to the development of drug resistance. However, precise quantification of cellularity levels of subpopulations, and in particular how they evolve in response to treatment, has been challenging. Here we describe the high precision characterization of subclonal evolution within triple-negative breast cancer patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) generated from three patients in response to multiple chemotherapies, covering >100 total samples and allowing for extensive intratumoral comparisons. Computational mutation and copy number analysis from post-treatment sequencing indicated sample-specific differences in tumor populations both in response to treatment and due to genetic drift. I will describe the evolutionary behaviors we have observed, which include selective sweeps, spatial diffusion, and symbiosis.

Speaker: Jeffrey Chuang, Ph.D, The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine; University of Connecticut Health Center Dept. of Genetics and Genome Sciences; Host: Eduardo Eyras

Room Aula room 473.10 (4th floor)