Malignant tumours show a marked degree of morphological, molecular and proteomic heterogeneity. This variability is closely related to microenvironmental factors and the location of the tumour. The activation of genetic alterations is very tissue-dependent and only few tumours have distinct genetic alterations. Importantly, the activation state of proteins and signaling factors is heterogeneous in the primary tumour and in metastases and recurrences. The molecular diagnosis based only on genetic alterations can lead to treatments with unpredictable responses, depending on the tumour location, such as the tumour response in melanomas versus colon carcinomas with BRAF mutations. Therefore, we understand that the correct evaluation of tumours requires a system that integrates both morphological, molecular and protein information in a clinical and pathological context, where intratumoral heterogeneity can be assessed. Thus, we propose the term 'tissunomics', where the diagnosis will be contextualised in each tumour based on the complementation of the pathological, molecular, protein expression, environmental cells and clinical data.
Keywords: genomics; histopathology; proteomics; tumour heterogeneity.
© 2019 Authors. Histopathology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.