Figure 1. Mutational heterogeneity with and across cancer.

(Adapted from Lawrence, Nature 2013, Figure 1). Authors assessed over 3000 cases of cancer from The Cancer Genome Atlas and plotted the number of mutations identified, patterns of mutations, and grouped them by tumor tissue-of-origin. The plot illustrates that variation of point mutation burden across different cancer types and also within a given cancer type such head and neck cancers, and the importance of performing personalized genomic testing. Further, some cancers appear to be hyper-mutated with 100s of mutations such as lung and melanoma cancers, while others such as acute myeloid leukemia have few point mutations.