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 1,273 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	249	20%
Japan	116	9%
United Kingdom	76	6%
Spain	51	4%
Canada	32	3%
Netherlands	25	2%
France	20	2%
Australia	18	1%
Germany	14	1%
Other	145	11%
Unknown	527	41%

Demographic breakdown

Type	Count	As %
Members of the public	917	72%
Scientists	243	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 2,366 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country	Count	As %
United States	45	2%
Germany	24	1%
United Kingdom	20	<1%
France	10	<1%
Italy	6	<1%
Switzerland	6	<1%
Spain	5	<1%
Denmark	5	<1%
Canada	5	<1%
Other	51	2%
Unknown	2189	93%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status	Count	As %
Student > Ph. D. Student	589	25%
Researcher	571	24%
Student > Bachelor	252	11%
Student > Master	220	9%
Other	141	6%
Other	474	20%
Unknown	119	5%

Readers by discipline	Count	As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences	840	36%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology	480	20%
Medicine and Dentistry	393	17%
Chemistry	60	3%
Computer Science	58	2%
Other	343	14%
Unknown	192	8%

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3077. 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 05 February 2020.

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#382

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Outputs from Science

#35

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Outputs of similar age

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Outputs of similar age from Science

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Altmetric has tracked 14,567,788 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.

So far Altmetric has tracked 64,667 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 47.3. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its peers.

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We're also able to compare this research output to 1,054 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.

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

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