Passenger Mutations: Cancer's Backseat and Backward Drivers

The current thinking about mutations in cancer cells holds that there are two types – driver mutations that are behind cancer growth because they give tumor cells a growth advantage, and passenger mutations that are along for the ride. "Historically, passenger mutations have been largely ignored," Leonid Mirny told BioWorld Today, because cancer development is seen largely as "a series of unfortunate events" in the form of accumulating driver mutations.