Exploring the field of cancer genomics can give a researcher
without a sturdy footing in bioinformatics a bad case of
information overload. But the potential payoff is high. Cancer
researchers have been amassing data on small mutations, copy
number variations, epigenetic changes, expression level
differences, and clinical features for a number of cancer types
since long before the first whole cancer genome sequence (of an
acute myeloid leukemia) was completed in 2008. That means
researchers diving into the fray today will have more—and higher
quality—information at their fingertips than ever before. Yet
navigating it won’t be easy, says William Hahn, an associate
professor of medicine who studies a number of cancers at the
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. “It’s a huge challenge
to know what’s out there and how to use it.” Much of the
available genomic data comes from a handful of large
international collaborations. The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), a
project of the National Cancer Institute and the Natio