Next generation sequencing in cancer research and clinical application

Abstract

The wide application of next-generation sequencing (NGS), mainly through whole genome, exome and transcriptome sequencing, provides a high-resolution and global view of the cancer genome. Coupled with powerful bioinformatics tools, NGS promises to revolutionize cancer research, diagnosis and therapy. In this paper, we review the recent advances in NGS-based cancer genomic research as well as clinical application, summarize the current integrative oncogenomic projects, resources and computational algorithms, and discuss the challenge and future directions in the research and clinical application of cancer genomic sequencing.

Figure 1

The workflow of integrating omics data in cancer research and clinical application. NGS technologies detect the genomic, transcriptomic and epigenomic alternations including mutations, copy number variations, structural variants, differentially expressed genes, fusion transcripts, DNA methylation change, etc. Various kinds of bioinformatics tools are used to analyze, integrate, and interpret the data to improve our understanding of cancer biology and develop personalized treatment strategy.