{"entity":{"id":"christina-curtis","kind":"person","name":"Christina Curtis","aka":[],"tldr":"Showed that colorectal cancers grow as a 'Big Bang' and that metastasis can be seeded years before diagnosis.","summary":"Christina Curtis developed the Big Bang model showing that colorectal tumours acquire their intratumour heterogeneity early and grow without stringent selection, and used computational modelling of paired primary-metastasis genomes to show that metastatic seeding often occurs years before the primary tumour is detected. She co-led METABRIC and her laboratory now studies how germline immunogenetics shapes somatic tumour evolution.","asOf":"2026-09-10","links":[{"label":"PubMed","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Curtis%20C%5BAuthor%5D%20tumor%20evolution"}],"tags":["tumour-evolution","computational","genomics"],"related":[],"cancers":["colorectal","breast-hr-positive"],"sections":[],"technologies":["wes-wgs"],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":["stanford"],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":["paper-gerlinger-intratumour-heterogeneity-nejm-2012"],"journals":["nature-genetics"],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"role":"Professor of Medicine, Genetics and Biomedical Data Science, Stanford University","institutionId":"stanford","specialisms":["Tumour evolution","Computational cancer biology","Metastasis timing","Breast cancer genomics"],"profiles":[{"label":"PubMed","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Curtis%20C%5BAuthor%5D%20tumor%20evolution"}],"papers":[{"title":"A Big Bang model of human colorectal tumor growth","journal":"Nature Genetics","year":2015,"doi":"10.1038/ng.3214"},{"title":"Quantitative evidence for early metastatic seeding in colorectal cancer","journal":"Nature Genetics","year":2019,"doi":"10.1038/s41588-019-0423-x"},{"title":"Gerlinger: a single biopsy misses most of the mutations in a kidney tumour","journal":"New England Journal of Medicine","year":2012,"url":"https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa1113205","doi":"10.1056/NEJMoa1113205"}],"orcid":"0000-0003-0166-3802"},"route":"/people/christina-curtis/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"colorectal","kind":"cancer","name":"Colorectal cancer","route":"/cancers/colorectal/"},{"id":"breast-hr-positive","kind":"cancer","name":"HR-positive / HER2-negative breast cancer","route":"/cancers/breast-hr-positive/"}],"technology":[{"id":"wes-wgs","kind":"technology","name":"Whole-exome & whole-genome sequencing","route":"/technologies/wes-wgs/"}],"institution":[{"id":"stanford","kind":"institution","name":"Stanford Health Care / Stanford Cancer Institute","route":"/institutions/stanford/"}],"paper":[{"id":"paper-gerlinger-intratumour-heterogeneity-nejm-2012","kind":"paper","name":"Gerlinger: a single biopsy misses most of the mutations in a kidney tumour","route":"/key-papers/paper-gerlinger-intratumour-heterogeneity-nejm-2012/"}],"journal":[{"id":"nature-genetics","kind":"journal","name":"Nature Genetics","route":"/journals/nature-genetics/"}]}}