title: Hypermutation takes the driver's seat.
abstract: Most pediatric tumors have only very few somatic mutations. However, a recent study revealed that a subset of tumors from children with congenital biallelic deficiency of DNA mismatch repair exhibits a mutational load surpassing almost all other cancers. In these ultra-hypermutated tumors, somatic mutations in the proofreading DNA polymerases complement the congenital mismatch repair deficiency to completely abolish replication repair, thereby driving tumor development. These findings open several possibilities for exploiting ultra-hypermutation for cancer therapy.
authors.affiliation: Division of Theoretical Bioinformatics (B080), German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, 69120 Germany.
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Schlesner
authors.affiliation: Division of Theoretical Bioinformatics (B080), German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, 69120 Germany ; Department for Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics, Institute for Pharmacy and Molecular Biotechnology (IPMB) and BioQuant, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, 69120 Germany ; Heidelberg Center for Personalised Oncology (DKFZ-HIPO), German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, 69120 Germany.
authors.forename: Roland
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Eils
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