Genetic Landascape of Primary versus metastatic colorectal cancer: to what extent are they concordant ?

Recent developments in genomic technologies have led an unprecedented view of the profound molecular complexity of colorectal cancer (CRC) and its evolution. The genomic landscape of CRC is characterized by a high heterogeneous landscape both at an intratumoral and at an inter-metastatic and intrametastatic level. In the era of personalized cancer medicine, the challenge is the definition of predictive biomarkers in respect of a such complex scenario. Despite the robust differences occurring between primary tumor and metastatic sites, the biomarkers currently validated in clinical practice have high concordance. The purpose of this review is to explore differences existing in genetic landscape of primary tumor and metastatic sites in CRC, in order to assess concordance and discordance rates of biologic events between different tumor lesions in CRC.