Report for: Variation in cancer risk among tissues can be explained by the number of stem cell divisions

Title	Variation in cancer risk among tissues can be explained by the number of stem cell divisions
Published in	Science, January 2015
DOI	10.1126/science.1260825
Pubmed ID	25554788
Authors	Cristian Tomasetti, Bert Vogelstein
Abstract	Some tissue types give rise to human cancers millions of times more often than other tissue types. Although this has been recognized for more than a century, it has never been explained. Here, we show that the lifetime risk of cancers of many different types is strongly correlated (0.81) with the total number of divisions of the normal self-renewing cells maintaining that tissue's homeostasis. These results suggest that only a third of the variation in cancer risk among tissues is attributable to environmental factors or inherited predispositions. The majority is due to "bad luck," that is, random mutations arising during DNA replication in normal, noncancerous stem cells. This is important not only for understanding the disease but also for designing strategies to limit the mortality it causes.

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Twitter Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 1,252 tweeters who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.

Geographical breakdown

Country	Count	As %
United States	233	19%
Japan	117	9%
United Kingdom	72	6%
Spain	51	4%
Canada	34	3%
Netherlands	24	2%
France	20	2%
Australia	17	1%
Germany	15	1%
Other	146	12%
Unknown	523	42%

Demographic breakdown

Type	Count	As %
Members of the public	906	72%
Scientists	233	19%
Practitioners (doctors, other healthcare professionals)	79	6%
Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors)	34	3%

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 2,273 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country	Count	As %
United States	47	2%
Germany	24	1%
United Kingdom	21	<1%
France	9	<1%
Italy	6	<1%
Switzerland	6	<1%
Spain	5	<1%
Canada	5	<1%
Denmark	5	<1%
Other	51	2%
Unknown	2094	92%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status	Count	As %
Student > Ph. D. Student	570	25%
Researcher	562	25%
Student > Bachelor	230	10%
Student > Master	217	10%
Other	139	6%
Other	554	24%
Unknown	1	<1%

Readers by discipline	Count	As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences	837	37%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology	446	20%
Medicine and Dentistry	389	17%
Unspecified	165	7%
Chemistry	58	3%
Other	377	17%
Unknown	1	<1%

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3059. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 20 October 2019.

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#260

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Outputs from Science

#24

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Altmetric has tracked 13,647,046 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.

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Variation in cancer risk among tissues can be explained by the number of stem cell divisions

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