Polyploid giant cancer cells!
Experimental findings from cell lines, mouse models, and clinical samples strongly support the role of tetraploidy in cancer evolution.
A large body of work has proposed that polyploid giant cancer cells, arising through repeated whole-genome doubling events, drive cancer initiation and drug resistance, but many conclusions are drawn from cell culture studies in which a single or no whole-genome doubling event has occurred.
Polyploid giant cancer cells are proposed to depolyploidize via multipolar divisions or budding, but such processes are unlikely to produce progeny with long-term viability.
Many studies have reported very large and presumably highly polyploid cells in drug-resistant and metastatic tumors, but tumor genomics data do not provide evidence that polyploid giant cancer cells generate progeny that expand into clonal populations.
Polyploid giant cancer cells could simply be a marker of ongoing genomic instability in advanced tumors.
https://www.cell.com/trends/cell-biology/fulltext/S0962-8924(26)00034-6
