Advancing cancer research through genomics technology evolution

Cancer is a disease of the genome; each cancer is the result of a unique combination of germline and somatic mutations, as well as epigenetic aberrations. A comprehensive catalog of all types of variants in a cancer opens new and unrivaled opportunities for understanding the mechanism of cancer onset and progression, predicting the response to therapeutics, and providing new biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis. Over the past 20-30 years, genomics technology evolutions have drastically transformed cancer researches. Powerful genomics platforms and tools have enabled whole-genome gene expression analysis, mutation analysis of millions of genetic markers in hundreds and thousands individuals, and ultimately the complete cancer genome sequencing in large clinical cohorts as exampled by The Cancer Genome Atlas Project (TCGA; http://cancergenome. nih.gov) and the International Cancer Genome Consortium initiatives (ICGC; http://www.icgc.org).