'Bad luck' of random mutations plays predominant role in cancer, study shows

Thursday, January 1, 2015 - 20:30 in Health & Medicine

A statistical model has been created that measures the proportion of cancer incidence, across many tissue types, caused mainly by random mutations that occur when stem cells divide. By this measure, two-thirds of adult cancer incidence across tissues can be explained primarily by “bad luck,” when these random mutations occur in genes that can drive cancer growth, while the remaining third are due to environmental factors and inherited genes.

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