title: Heterogeneity in breast cancer.
abstract: Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease. There is a high degree of diversity between and within tumors as well as among cancer-bearing individuals, and all of these factors together determine the risk of disease progression and therapeutic resistance. Advances in technologies such as whole-genome sequencing and functional viability screens now allow us to analyze tumors at unprecedented depths. However, translating this increasing knowledge into clinical practice remains a challenge in part due to tumor evolution driven by the diversity of cancer cell populations and their microenvironment. The articles in this Review series discuss recent advances in our understanding of breast tumor heterogeneity, therapies tailored based on this knowledge, and future ways of assessing and treating heterogeneous tumors.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA. Kornelia_Polyak@dfci.harvard.edu
authors.forename: Kornelia
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Polyak
mesh_terms: D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000209:etiology* / Q000235:genetics / Q000473:pathology / Q000628:therapy*; D005260:Female; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D057170:Translational Research, Biomedical