Genome Instability in Cancer Development

Research over the past decades has firmly established the genetic basis of cancer. In particular, studies on animal tumour viruses and chromosome rearrangements in human tumours have concurred to identify so-called ‘proto-oncogenes’ and ‘tumour suppressor genes’, whose deregulation promotes carcinogenesis. These important findings not only explain the occurrence of certain hereditary tumours, but they also set the stage for the development of anti-cancer drugs that specifically target activ...