{"entity":{"id":"tumour-evolution","kind":"term","name":"Tumour evolution (somatic evolution)","aka":["tumour evolution","tumor evolution","somatic evolution","somatic evolution in cancer","evolution of the tumour"],"tldr":"A tumour changes over time as its cells acquire mutations and the fittest clones take over, which is why cancers relapse and resist treatment.","summary":"Somatic evolution, as Wikipedia summarises it, is the accumulation of mutations and epimutations in body cells over a lifetime and the effect of those changes on the cells' fitness; Vogelstein's colon cancer studies first showed it and the framework now explains progression, metastasis and resistance. Tracking clones through time from serial biopsies or blood is one of the mechanisms cancer models aim to learn.","asOf":"2026-09-24","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_evolution_in_cancer","links":[{"label":"Wikipedia","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_evolution_in_cancer"}],"tags":["cansim-terms"],"related":["cancer-ai-vocabulary"],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":["clonal-evolution-tracking"],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":["clonal-evolution"],"terms":["clonal-evolution-theory","intra-tumour-heterogeneity"],"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/tumour-evolution."],"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/tumour-evolution/","neighbours":{"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":"intra-tumour-heterogeneity","kind":"term","name":"Intra-tumour heterogeneity","route":"/terms/intra-tumour-heterogeneity/"}],"technology":[{"id":"clonal-evolution-tracking","kind":"technology","name":"Tumour clonal evolution tracking","route":"/technologies/clonal-evolution-tracking/"}],"pathway":[{"id":"clonal-evolution","kind":"pathway","name":"Clonal evolution & minimal residual disease","route":"/pathways/clonal-evolution/"}]}}