Dr Ed Liu speaks with ecancer at SABCS 2017 about the tandem duplicator phenotype as a distinct genomic configuration in cancer.

He describes how next-generation sequencing studies have revealed genome-wide structural variation patterns in cancer, such as chromothripsis and chromoplexy, that do not engage a single discernable driver mutation, and whose clinical relevance is unclear.

Dr Liu devised a robust genomic metric able to identify cancers with a chromotype called tandem duplicator phenotype (TDP) characterised by frequent and distributed tandem duplications (TDs).

He concludes that TDP is a common cancer chromotype that coordinately alters oncogene/tumour suppressor expression with potential as a marker for chemotherapeutic response.