| Cancer remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide. The identification of specific biomarkers is necessary for early cancer diagnosis whereas the discovery of molecular targets is necessary for designing therapeutic intervention. Recent advances in sequencing allow for high resolution transcriptomic analysis which will contribute to our understanding of the molecular basis of cancer. Accurate gene expression profiling of a tumor and matched normal tissue by whole transcriptome sequencing will reveal not only the relative abundance of annotated transcripts but also previously unknown transcripts and transcript isoforms. Moreover tumor-specific mutations (biomarkers) can be detected. |
