The Challenges of Measuring Tumor Heterogeneity

Clinical Pearls

Ari Melnick, MD, a professor of medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical College, discusses the challenges associated with measuring tumor heterogeneity.

• Measuring variability requires looking at many methylated sites in the genome, which is unlikely to become a routine test
• There remains a need for a way to measure tumor heterogeneity in a reliable and meaningful way
• Researchers are currently looking for si​tes in the genome that may be a surrogate marker for genome-wide profiling
• It is impossible to target diversity from the genetic standpoint, though epigenetic diversity could be targeted
• Hypothetically, drugs could demethylate the genome to make it more uniform