Colorectal adenomas contain multiple somatic mutations that do not coincide with synchronous adenocarcinoma specimens.

• Main Authors: José P Vaqué, Nerea Martínez, Ignacio Varela, Fidel Fernández, Marta Mayorga, Sophia Derdak, Sergi Beltrán, Thaidy Moreno, Carmen Almaraz, Gonzalo De Las Heras, Mónica Bayés, Ivo Gut, Javier Crespo, Miguel A Piris
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2015-01-01
• Series: PLoS ONE
• Online Access: http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4361059?pdf=render

We have performed a comparative ultrasequencing study of multiple colorectal lesions obtained simultaneously from four patients. Our data show that benign lesions (adenomatous or hyperplastic polyps) contain a high mutational load. Additionally multiple synchronous colorectal lesions show non overlapping mutational signatures highlighting the degree of heterogeneity between multiple specimens in the same patient. Observations in these cases imply that considering not only the number of mutations but an effective oncogenic combination of mutations can determine the malignant progression of colorectal lesions.