Colon cancer inter-tumour heterogeneity is installed on multiple levels, ranging from (epi)genetic driver events to signalling pathway rewiring reflected by differential gene expression patterns. Although the existence of heterogeneity in colon cancer has been recognised for a longer period of time, it is sparingly incorporated as a determining factor in current clinical practice. Here we describe how unsupervised gene expression-based classification efforts, amongst which the consensus molecular subtypes (CMS), can stratify patients in biological subgroups associated with distinct disease outcome and responses to therapy. We will discuss what is needed to extend these subtyping efforts to the clinic and we will argue that preclinical models recapitulate CMS subtypes and can be of vital use to increase our understanding of treatment response and resistance and to discover novel targets for therapy.

结肠癌的肿瘤间异质性安装在多个级别，范围从（epi）遗传驱动事件到信号通路重新布线，反映了差异基因表达模式。尽管人们已经认识到结肠癌中异质性的存在已持续了较长的时间，但在当前的临床实践中仍很少将异质性纳入其中。在这里，我们描述了基于无监督基因表达的分类工作，其中共有分子亚型（CMS）如何将与不同疾病结果和治疗反应相关的生物学亚组中的患者分层。