Bioinformatics Approaches to Cancer Gene Discovery
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The Cancer Gene Anatomy Project (CGAP) database of the National Cancer Institute has thousands of known and novel expressed
sequence tags (ESTs). These ESTs, derived from diverse normal and tumor cDNA libraries, offer an attractive starting point
for cancer gene discovery. Data-mining the CGAP database led to the identification of ESTs that were predicted to be specific
to select solid tumors. Two genes from these efforts were taken to proof of concept for diagnostic and therapeutics indications
of cancer. Microarray technology was used in conjunction with bioinformatics to understand the mechanism of one of the targets
discovered. These efforts provide an example of gene discovery by using bioinformatics approaches. The strengths and weaknesses
of this approach are discussed in this review.
