Modeling the development of in-situ breast-cancer - a clonal evolutionary approach

We present a speculative hypothesis based on the assumption that a morphological parameter of a tumour in this case the nuclear area as assessed by computerised image analysis can be utilised to predict the number of specific events occurring at a gene or chromosomal level within a tumour given the assumption that the tumour morphology is predictive of the clonal evolution of a tumour and clonal progression of neoplasia. Assuming that the phenotype of the tumour is truly determined by the genotype and that morphological variations within a tumour are not due to other factors such analogous to biotypic or ecotypic diversity in animal species we argue that this may be a valuable model to approach the understanding of tumour biology and clonal evolution of tumour cell populations. Such analyses could in future be important in cytogenetic or microdissection studies of DCIS, and could be applicable to studies of clonal evolution in DCIS and other neoplasms using fluorescent in situ hybridisation.