Cancer is a genetic disease composed of two broad classes: the inherited genome that you're born with and the somatic genome, which is the genetics of the cancer tumor itself. Dr. Eli Van Allen, a medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, says it’s possible that both the genetics you were born with and the genetics of the tumor can contribute to your risk of cancer and how the cancer behaves. He says the goal of ongoing genetic research is to determine how to prevent and treat the disease in a targeted way.
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