Understanding oncogenicity of cancer driver genes and mutations in the cancer genomics era

FEBS Letters

article

Eduard Porta-Pardo¹  Alfonso Valencia¹  Adam Godzik⁴ 

[1] Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC);Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute (IJC);Institucio Catalana de Recerca I Estudis Avançats (ICREA);Division of Biomedical Sciences, University of California Riverside School of Medicine

关键词: cancer drivers;    cancer genes;    multiscale analysis;    personalized medicine;    variants of unknown significance;   

DOI  :  10.1002/1873-3468.13781

来源: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

【 摘 要 】

One of the key challenges of cancer biology is to catalogue and understand the somatic genomic alterations leading to cancer. Although alternative definitions and search methods have been developed to identify cancer driver genes and mutations, analyses of thousands of cancer genomes return a remarkably similar catalogue of around 300 genes that are mutated in at least one cancer type. Yet, many features of these genes and their role in cancer remain unclear, first and foremost when a somatic mutation is truly oncogenic. In this review, we first summarize some of the recent efforts in completing the catalogue of cancer driver genes. Then, we give an overview of different aspects that influence the oncogenicity of somatic mutations in the core cancer driver genes, including their interactions with the germline genome, other cancer driver mutations, the immune system, or their potential role in healthy tissues. In the coming years, this research holds promise to illuminate how, when, and why cancer driver genes and mutations are really drivers, and thereby move personalized cancer medicine and targeted therapies forward.

【 授权许可】

Unknown