Cancer Informatics: A Powerful Approach to Cancer Research in the Post-Genomic Age

Traditionally, the cancer biology has been an experimental science. However, with the advent of post-genomic age, the trend is shifting. The informatics approach is playing an increasingly important role in cancer research. In fact, a huge amount of cancer genomic data has emerged with rapid advances in genome technology. Since the end of 1990s, the microarray technology has been used to rapidly measure the expression levels of tens of thousands of genes in a single experiment [1]. This technology has facilitated the molecular exploration of cancer [2-9]. For example, for medical applications, microarray gene expression profiling has been used to develop classifiers of prognosis or sensitivity to particular treatments [10-15].