The extraordinary case of an individual surviving 12 tumors and the diagnostic opportunities of single-cell analysis

An extraordinary case, recently published in the journal Science Advances, describes a 36-year-old individual with one-of-a-kind mutations who has survived 12 tumors during her lifetime. Five of the tumors developed were malignant, yet interestingly they all disappeared relatively easily. This individual first developed rhabdomyosarcoma as a child and was treated with chemotherapy. In the subsequent years, the patient went on to develop 11 more tumors, all in different locations and of different types. In 2017 the individual was screened for genes that are frequently linked to hereditary cancer, but no risk factors were identified. Following this, researchers decided to sequence...