Description

Clonal Dynamics in Cancer at Single Cell Resolution

Samuel Aparicio

University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC Canada

A fundamental property of cancers which underpins clinical features such as treatment resistance and metastasis, is the capacity of tumour genomes and epigenomes to evolve over time. The ensuing cellular dynamics can be interpreted as the consequences of fitness associated with mutation/variation of the genome and epigenome. Understanding these processes, especially the assignment of clonal genotypes, requires the capacity to sequence and interpret single cell genomes. I will describe recent physical methods we have developed for single cell sequencing, incorporating nano and microfluidics for sequencing and approaches to handling single cell genome information for determining clonal genotypes in the context of studying clonal evolution in solid human cancers.