ABSTRACT
How and when tumoral clones start spreading to surrounding and distant tissues is currently unclear. Here, we leveraged a model-based evolutionary framework to investigate the demographic and biogeographic history of a colorectal cancer. Our analyses strongly support an early monoclonal metastatic colonization, followed by a rapid population expansion at both primary and secondary sites. Moreover, we infer a hematogenous metastatic spread seemingly under positive selection, plus the return of some tumoral cells from the liver back to the colon lymph nodes. This study illustrates how sophisticated techniques typical of organismal evolution can provide a detailed picture of the complex tumoral dynamics over time and space.
Copyright
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
Posted May 02, 2019.
