Intratumoural Heterogeneity as a Major Challenge for Cancer Modelling and Successful Treatment

Abstract

Cancer heterogeneity refers to the fact that cancer cells are characterised by different genomic/transcriptomic/proteomic compositions, which often confer behavioural properties, such as enhanced drug resistance, survival and propensity to form metastasis. Modern methodology, such as single-cell barcoding, now allows a deeper look into this mechanic, and therefore a possibility to derive more efficient, new treatments. However, cell culture approaches are commonly used to evaluate those novel approaches, and the ability to faithfully model cancer heterogeneity is still in its infancy.