Combination of high-throughput genomic technologies and bioinformatics for molecular characterization of cancer

With the expansion of available high-throughput genomic technologies such as DNA microarray and next generation sequencing (NGS) in the past two decades, knowing how to use appropriate software tools running on powerful computers is a necessity for biologists/physicians to identify new genes or targets. Thus, bioinformaticians have been developing many user-friendly analytical tools/systems; those tools/systems enable researchers to efficiently analyze massive genomic data and select genes with modulated expression patterns or altered characters. Based on the modulated genes identified from genomic analyses, researchers can further analyze and investigate possible regulatory mechanisms of human genes and diseases in order to discover potential therapeutic targets or predictive biomarkers. In my talk, I will present some bioinformatic tools which were developed in my lab for processing, analyzing and interpreting genomic data. In addition, I will provide a few studies to demonstrate how we utilized different analytical tools to identify new molecular signatures or predictive biomarkers in various cancers.