... – evasion of apoptosis, tissue invasion and metastasis, altered cellular metabolism, genome instability and drug resistance. Emerging evidence indicates that the dysregulation of alternative splicing also promotes a permissive environment for increased tumour heterogeneity and cellular plasticity...

... Cancer stem cells Therapy resistance Tumour heterogeneity Cancer is widely known to be a heterogeneous disease, in which malignant cells communicate with various other cell types, such as endothelial, haematopoietic and stromal cells (see Glossary, Box 1 ). This complex system within a tumour...