[blithedale]

Good stuff.

Also of note is tumor heterogenity. Not only are cancers different between cell origin and across different patients, cancer is not one uniform genetic entity even inside a single person.

Why? The cancer's ability to repair DNA mutations is crap, so different chunks of tumor can rapidly evolve different mutations.

You might be able to drug one portion of the tumor based on a fancy receptor/biomarker, but that tumor chunk will get outcompeted by a different cancer blob that doesn't express that.

[agumonkey]

Yes, and this was ignored for quite a while at least at the mainstream level.

I've read not too long ago that a tumor is actually mostly an outer layer of active cells, the inner is made up of dead tumors probably serving as nutrient (<= very blurry on this). yet another part of that strange anti-life living form named cancer.