Cancer remains one of the leading causes of death in the developed world and despite impressive advances in therapeutic modalities, only a small subset of patients are currently cured. The underlying genetic heterogeneity of cancers clearly plays a crucial role in determining both the clinical course of individual pathologies and their responses to standard treatments. Although every tumour is to some extent distinct, there are recurrent features of cancers that can be exploited as therapeutic targets and as prognostic and predictive biomarkers; one such attribute is telomere length. Here we discuss the utility of telomere length evaluation in cancer and describe some of the promise and challenges of bringing this into clinical practice.

中文翻译：

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端粒长度测量在癌症中的临床应用。

癌症仍然是发达国家的主要死亡原因之一，尽管治疗方法取得了令人瞩目的进步，但目前只有一小部分患者可以治愈。癌症的潜在遗传异质性显然在确定个体病理的临床过程及其对标准治疗的反应中起着至关重要的作用。尽管每个肿瘤在一定程度上都是不同的，但是癌症的复发特征可以用作治疗靶点以及作为预后和预测性生物标志物。一种这样的属性是端粒长度。在这里，我们讨论了端粒长度评估在癌症中的效用，并描述了将其应用于临床的一些前景和挑战。