PLoS Biology (Jul 2014)

Tracking genomic cancer evolution for precision medicine: the lung TRACERx study.

  • Mariam Jamal-Hanjani,
  • Alan Hackshaw,
  • Yenting Ngai,
  • Jacqueline Shaw,
  • Caroline Dive,
  • Sergio Quezada,
  • Gary Middleton,
  • Elza de Bruin,
  • John Le Quesne,
  • Seema Shafi,
  • Mary Falzon,
  • Stuart Horswell,
  • Fiona Blackhall,
  • Iftekhar Khan,
  • Sam Janes,
  • Marianne Nicolson,
  • David Lawrence,
  • Martin Forster,
  • Dean Fennell,
  • Siow-Ming Lee,
  • Jason Lester,
  • Keith Kerr,
  • Salli Muller,
  • Natasha Iles,
  • Sean Smith,
  • Nirupa Murugaesu,
  • Richard Mitter,
  • Max Salm,
  • Aengus Stuart,
  • Nik Matthews,
  • Haydn Adams,
  • Tanya Ahmad,
  • Richard Attanoos,
  • Jonathan Bennett,
  • Nicolai Juul Birkbak,
  • Richard Booton,
  • Ged Brady,
  • Keith Buchan,
  • Arrigo Capitano,
  • Mahendran Chetty,
  • Mark Cobbold,
  • Philip Crosbie,
  • Helen Davies,
  • Alan Denison,
  • Madhav Djearman,
  • Jacki Goldman,
  • Tom Haswell,
  • Leena Joseph,
  • Malgorzata Kornaszewska,
  • Matthew Krebs,
  • Gerald Langman,
  • Mairead MacKenzie,
  • Joy Millar,
  • Bruno Morgan,
  • Babu Naidu,
  • Daisuke Nonaka,
  • Karl Peggs,
  • Catrin Pritchard,
  • Hardy Remmen,
  • Andrew Rowan,
  • Rajesh Shah,
  • Elaine Smith,
  • Yvonne Summers,
  • Magali Taylor,
  • Selvaraju Veeriah,
  • David Waller,
  • Ben Wilcox,
  • Maggie Wilcox,
  • Ian Woolhouse,
  • Nicholas McGranahan,
  • Charles Swanton

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001906
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 7
p. e1001906

Abstract

Read online

The importance of intratumour genetic and functional heterogeneity is increasingly recognised as a driver of cancer progression and survival outcome. Understanding how tumour clonal heterogeneity impacts upon therapeutic outcome, however, is still an area of unmet clinical and scientific need. TRACERx (TRAcking non-small cell lung Cancer Evolution through therapy [Rx]), a prospective study of patients with primary non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), aims to define the evolutionary trajectories of lung cancer in both space and time through multiregion and longitudinal tumour sampling and genetic analysis. By following cancers from diagnosis to relapse, tracking the evolutionary trajectories of tumours in relation to therapeutic interventions, and determining the impact of clonal heterogeneity on clinical outcomes, TRACERx may help to identify novel therapeutic targets for NSCLC and may also serve as a model applicable to other cancer types.