Monitoring tumour progression in a patient with colorectal carcinoma using comparative genomic hybridisation on DNA oligonucleotide arrays (aCGH)

Aims: Genetic heterogeneity is a hallmark of cancer and evolves during tumour development as well as disease progression and metastasis expansion. Revealing genetic changes in the primary tumour and the autologous metastases of cancer patients is an important step towards targeted therapies. Recent studies have shown enormous differences in genetic constitution between primary tumour and metastases. This fact could be a reason for failure of currently used therapies, which are fitted to the genetic aberrations found in the primary tumour. The aim of this study was to elucidate the genetic changes in the primary…