What are we learning from studying cancers in three dimensions? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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An effort is underway to characterize cancerous tumors in three dimensions, with an eye toward a more complete understanding of their behavior. A series of papers have recently come out describing what’s been seen so far. William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, says at least one observation is shaking up a foundational assumption of how cancers begin.

Nelson: They've put in a public data place 3D renderings of tumors from more than 2000 subjects, a series of a dozen papers or so that just came out. About 15 to 30% of precancerous lesions in the colon look like they might arise from more than one cell. Since the 1960s that had been believed that cancers were the result of a single cell that's gone haywire, that that cell would then outgrow its environment but it hints at us it may not always be true.        :30

Nelson predicts more such findings will inform how cancers are treated. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.