High Definition Clonal Analyses of Archival Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma Samples

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Genomic instability appears to cooperate with Darwinian selection to promote cancer formation through a process in which genomic aberrations occur at accelerated rates, and those alterations that provide a selective growth advantage lead to clonal evolution and expansion. Consequently the patterns of genomic aberrations in cancers can vary extensively, even in tumors arising in the same organ site. A fundamental hypothesis of current cancer genome efforts is that tumor cells become differentially resistant or sensitive to available clinical interventions according to selected aberrations present in each sample and the pathways that they target. Thus the identification of selected aberrations in patient samples will help develop novel therapeutic targets that can be advanced for improved more personalized approach to the treatment of cancer. Recent advances in genomic technologies provide highly detailed analyses of samples of interest. For example oligonucleotide CGH arrays can distinguish single copy changes across an entire genome at intragenic mapping resolution with probe error rates of