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Figure 7 | Environmental Health

Figure 7

From: Somatic mutations in cancer development

Figure 7

A cartoon illustrating current views of the origin of cancer, which is consequent on n successive somatic mutations. The final result is a clonal population of cells with highly disregulated growth. It can be presumed that in fact each one of the mutational steps entails a growth advantage, even if small: this increases the number of cells that can be targeted by the next mutation. The term n-1 is used to indicate the penultimate step in the pathway, because the number n is not fixed: it is estimated that it may range, for the majority of tumors, from 3 to 6 or even more.

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