Mini Review
De Macedo JE, Machado M
Abstract
For long, cancer is widely considered a heterogeneous disease. Due to recent evolution in technology, we have bypassed simple pathological analysis, immunohistochemistry evaluation and molecular genetics to characterize cancer as an individual and static disease. In fact, pathology has for long been the “gold standard” to characterize cancer within each type, in many different subtypes according to its oncological behaviour, aggressiveness and tailoring treatment. Now-a-days, rapid analysis of cancer genome at a single nucleotide level, has allowed scientists to define inter-tumour heterogeneity, at the basis of somatic alterations, which are common between tumours with the same histology (gold standard).