Translational Research

Accelerating the clinical application of promising research findings

Research & Services

Home » Translational Research » Research Highlights » Cancer » Human Tumor Sequencing » Here

Research findings about genomic heterogeneity in colon cancer presented at ASHG annual meeting

At the American Society of Human Genetics 2010 annual conference, Nov. 2 to 6, in Washington, D.C., Samuel Levy, Ph.D., Scripps Translational Science Institute (STSI)‘s Director of Genome Sciences, presented a poster titled, “The role of genomic heterogeneity in primary tumors from colon cancer patients,” about findings from STSI’s ongoing Human Tumor Sequencing study.

In different anatomic areas of one patient’s colon cancer, Dr Levy and his collaborators at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and Scripps Clinic used a genomics based approach to characterize gene-based mutational events common and unique to each anatomic locus in a tumor. To understand how a precise molecular characterization of events within a single tumor is influenced by the tumor’s heterogeneity, Dr. Levy and his colleagues developed a methodology that measured and established the relationship between changes in the exome in relation to tumor locus (epicenter, invading edge, and tumor to normal tissue transition).

Dr. Levy’s collaborators include Glenn Oliveira, Andrew Carson, Ph.D., and Ali Torkamani, Ph.D., of STSI; Kelly Bethel, M.D., of Scripps Clinic; and Peter Kuhn, Ph.D., of TSRI.

image