I thought this was an interesting note from the field of cancer research: genetic analysis of renal cancer cells in the same patient, including metastasized cells, shows a great deal of variation pointing to rapid mutation and even what you could call rapid evolution of the cells to adapt to their environments, i.e., various sites in the body.
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/03/20/personalized_medicine_for_cancer_try_every_cell.php
Derek Lowe, the blogger who pointed to the paper, comments:"Not only is cancer not a single disease, and not only is a single type of cancer not a single type of cancer, but individual patients contain a multitude of different cancerous cell lines, which vary by location."
Interesting. The more we find out, it seems, the more we begin to grasp why cancers are so mind-bogglingly difficult to treat.
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