Cancer Genetics & Epigenetics

Our research expertise in cancer genetics include the traditional approaches where the manifestation of genomic instability is used as the experimental evidence, such as the use of loss of hetrozygosity (LOH) or amplification of specific genomic regions, for the identification and fine mapping of tumor suppressor genes and oncogenes, respectively, and more recently, gene expression profiling and the high throughput genomic DNA sequencing approaches for the identification of novel cancer genes/biomarkers. To dissect the molecular basis of heterogeneity in genetic and epigenetic alterations of genes and the complexity in cancer progression, we use a simple-minded multi-modular molecular network (MMMN) cancer progression model as the road map to visualize the various genes in networks of pathways. In order to contribute to the “big picture” of interconnected network of events that mediate cancer progression to metastasis and therapeutic resistance, we are exploiting various cancer models to elucidate the molecular networks and the underlying mechanisms involved in cancer metastasis and for defining the cancer stem cell properties.