Since Vogelstein had preselected his list of four genes, he could not enumerate the total number of genes required for the march of cancer. (The technology available in 1988 would not permit such an analysis; he would need to wait two decades before that technology would become available.) But he had proved an important point, that such a discrete genetic march existed. Papanicolaou and Auerbach had described the pathological transition of cancer as a multistep process, starting with premalignancy and marching inexorably toward invasive cancer. Vogelstein showed that the genetic progression of
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