Comment by mikepurvis
2 days ago
Right, but that's within a single host isn't it? Like patient A gets that mutation and succumbs, that sucks, but the stronger cancer cells don't them jump to patient B the way antibiotic-resistant bacteria do.
(barring the transmissible cancers article that your sibling comment linked to, but that's not the common case)
Sure, but my point is that convergent selective pressure across different individuals' tumors is strong enough that they independently arrive on the same resistance mechanisms to a given therapy, e.g. [0]. Just like if you performed the same bacterial antibiotic resistance experiment [1] across multiple independent trials, you'd repeatedly get the same result.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48505231#48507925