{"entity":{"id":"chromosome","kind":"term","name":"Chromosome","aka":["chromosomes","chromosomal"],"tldr":"One of the 46 long bundles into which a cell's DNA is packed. Cancer cells often have broken, missing, or extra chromosomes.","summary":"Each human cell carries 23 pairs of chromosomes, one set from each parent, and each chromosome is a single continuous DNA molecule wrapped around proteins. Cancer cells frequently gain or lose whole chromosomes or pieces of them (aneuploidy), swap segments between chromosomes (creating gene fusions), or copy a segment many times over (amplification). Karyotypes and copy-number profiles read these large-scale changes; the Philadelphia chromosome in chronic myeloid leukaemia, which fuses BCR and ABL, was the first such change tied to a specific cancer and to a specific drug, imatinib.","asOf":"2026-09-09","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome","links":[{"label":"Wikipedia","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome"}],"tags":[],"related":["dna-term","gene","amplification","deletion","gene-fusion"],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":["imatinib"],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"category":"Biology basics"},"route":"/terms/chromosome/","neighbours":{"term":[{"id":"amplification","kind":"term","name":"Amplification","route":"/terms/amplification/"},{"id":"deletion","kind":"term","name":"Deletion","route":"/terms/deletion/"},{"id":"dna-term","kind":"term","name":"DNA","route":"/terms/dna-term/"},{"id":"gene","kind":"term","name":"Gene","route":"/terms/gene/"},{"id":"gene-fusion","kind":"term","name":"Gene fusion","route":"/terms/gene-fusion/"},{"id":"nucleus","kind":"term","name":"Nucleus","route":"/terms/nucleus/"}],"drug":[{"id":"imatinib","kind":"drug","name":"Imatinib","route":"/drugs/imatinib/"}]}}