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Updated: Aug 2, 2025

Next Generation Sequencing for the Detection of Actionable Mutations in Solid and Liquid Tumors
Published on: September 20, 2016
Cancer driver mutations: predictions and reality
Daria Ostroverkhova1, Teresa M Przytycka2, Anna R Panchenko3
1Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada.
Abstract:
Cancer cells accumulate many genetic alterations throughout their lifetime, but only a few of them drive cancer progression, termed driver mutations. Driver mutations may vary between cancer types and patients, can remain latent for a long time and become drivers at particular cancer stages, or may drive oncogenesis only in conjunction with other mutations. The high mutational, biochemical, and histological tumor heterogeneity makes driver mutation identification very challenging. In this review we summarize recent efforts to identify driver mutations in cancer and annotate their effects. We underline the success of computational methods to predict driver mutations in finding novel cancer biomarkers, including in circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA). We also report on the boundaries of their applicability in clinical research.
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