A new paper in Nature marks the culmination of a very successful and hugely fun collaboration: “Genetic background sets the trajectory of experimental cancer evolution”. This monumental project set up by Duncan Odom’s lab used a well understood experimental system to profile the earliest stages of liver cancer development at scale – effectively re-running tumour initiation and establishment many hundreds of times in mice – and allowing us to ask questions that are impossible to address in humans. How reproducible is tumour development when you can control for environmental and other factors? How much does your genetic background (the DNA you begin with) matter? And how do random DNA mutations develop into successful tumours?
Two of our fantastic collaborators on this project, Sarah and Martin, have posted an accessible summary of the work.
The Semple Lab 