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Updated: Jul 5, 2026

Comparative Lesions Analysis Through a Targeted Sequencing Approach
Published on: November 5, 2019
Functional classification analysis of somatically mutated genes in human breast and colorectal cancers
Thomas W Chittenden1, Eleanor A Howe, Aedin C Culhane
1Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology and Department of Cancer Biology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA 02115-6084, USA.
Abstract:
A recent study published by Sjoblom and colleagues [T. Sjoblom, S. Jones, L.D. Wood, D.W. Parsons, J. Lin, T.D. Barber, D. Mandelker, R.J. Leary, J. Ptak, N. Silliman, S. Szabo, P. Buckhaults, C. Farrell, P. Meeh, S.D. Markowitz, J. Willis, D. Dawson, J.K. Willson, A.F. Gazdar, J. Hartigan, L. Wu, C. Liu, G. Parmigiani, B.H. Park, K.E. Bachman, N. Papadopoulos, B. Vogelstein, K.W. Kinzler, V.E. Velculescu, The consensus coding sequences of human breast and colorectal cancers. Science 314 (2006) 268-274.] performed comprehensive sequencing of 13,023 human genes and identified mutations in genes specific to breast and colorectal tumors, providing insight into organ-specific tumor biology. Here we present a systematic analysis of the functional classifications of Sjoblom's "CAN" genes, a subset of these validated mutant genes, that identifies novel organ-specific biological themes and molecular pathways associated with disease-specific etiology. This analysis links four somatically mutated genes associated with diverse oncological types to colorectal and breast cancers through established TGF-beta1-regulated interactions, revealing mechanistic differences in these cancers and providing potential diagnostic and therapeutic targets.
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