Angaji, ArmanOwusu, MichelVelling, ChristophDick, NicolaWeghorn, DonateBerg, Johannes2025-02-072025-02-072024Angaji A, Owusu M, Velling C, Dick N, Weghorn D, Berg J. High-density sampling reveals volume growth in human tumours. Elife. 2024 Nov 26;13:RP95338. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.953382050-084Xhttp://hdl.handle.net/10230/69522In growing cell populations such as tumours, mutations can serve as markers that allow tracking the past evolution from current samples. The genomic analyses of bulk samples and samples from multiple regions have shed light on the evolutionary forces acting on tumours. However, little is known empirically on the spatio-temporal dynamics of tumour evolution. Here, we leverage published data from resected hepatocellular carcinomas, each with several hundred samples taken in two and three dimensions. Using spatial metrics of evolution, we find that tumour cells grow predominantly uniformly within the tumour volume instead of at the surface. We determine how mutations and cells are dispersed throughout the tumour and how cell death contributes to the overall tumour growth. Our methods shed light on the early evolution of tumours in vivo and can be applied to high-resolution data in the emerging field of spatial biology.application/pdfeng© 2024, Angaji et al. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.95338Cancer biologyEvolutionary biologyHumanMulti-region tumour samplesSpatial genomicsTumour samplesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess