{"entity":{"id":"intra-tumour-heterogeneity","kind":"term","name":"Intra-tumour heterogeneity","aka":["intra-tumour heterogeneity","intratumour heterogeneity","intratumoral heterogeneity","intra-tumor heterogeneity","ITH"],"tldr":"Cells within one tumour can differ in their genes, appearance and behaviour, so a single biopsy may not represent the whole cancer.","summary":"Tumour heterogeneity, per Wikipedia, is the observation that tumour cells show distinct morphological and phenotypic profiles (gene expression, metabolism, proliferation, metastatic potential) both between tumours and within a single tumour. Within-tumour heterogeneity is why one section can carry several molecular subtypes and a spread of predicted risk, and why single-sample predictions carry an irreducible uncertainty.","asOf":"2026-09-24","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumour_heterogeneity","links":[{"label":"Wikipedia","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumour_heterogeneity"}],"tags":["cansim-terms"],"related":["b-tumor-heterogeneity","cancer-ai-vocabulary"],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":["clonal-evolution"],"terms":["clonal-evolution-theory"],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":["Listed in the CanSim terms map 1.0.0 (docs/onco/terms.json, generated 2026-09-24), CC BY 4.0, attribution: CanSim project, an open, public-data-first cancer foundation-model programme; CanSim page path /terms/intra-tumour-heterogeneity."],"provenance":{"editedBy":"OnCo CanSim terms wave (Wikipedia summaries, standards and project pages, GDC and FDA pages, Europe PMC)","editedOn":"2026-09-24","note":"CanSim terms map 1.0.0 (docs/onco/terms.json, generated 2026-09-24), CC BY 4.0, attribution: CanSim project, an open, public-data-first cancer foundation-model programme"},"category":"Cancer biology"},"route":"/terms/intra-tumour-heterogeneity/","neighbours":{"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-tumor-heterogeneity","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Tumour heterogeneity and clonal evolution","route":"/bottlenecks/b-tumor-heterogeneity/"}],"term":[{"id":"cancer-ai-vocabulary","kind":"term","name":"Cancer AI vocabulary (CanSim terms map)","route":"/terms/cancer-ai-vocabulary/"},{"id":"clonal-evolution-theory","kind":"term","name":"Clonal evolution and the ecological view of cancer","route":"/terms/clonal-evolution-theory/"},{"id":"tumour-evolution","kind":"term","name":"Tumour evolution (somatic evolution)","route":"/terms/tumour-evolution/"}],"pathway":[{"id":"clonal-evolution","kind":"pathway","name":"Clonal evolution & minimal residual disease","route":"/pathways/clonal-evolution/"}]}}