The aberrant methylation of CpG islands is a common epigenetic alteration found in cancers. The process contributes to cancer formation through the transcriptional silencing of tumor suppressor genes. CpG island methylation has been observed in aberrant crypt foci (ACF) and adenomas in the colon, implicating it in the earliest aspects of colon cancer formation. In addition, some investigators h...

Background Approximately 5% to 10% of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) has a hereditary basis. In most of these defined hereditary cancer syndromes, PDAC is not the predominant cancer type. Traditional criteria for publicly funded genetic testing typically require the presence of a set combination of the predominant syndrome-associated cancer types in the family history.We report the ide...

Oral tongue squamous cell carcinomas (OTSCC) are a homogeneous group of tumors characterized by aggressive behavior, early spread to lymph nodes and a higher rate of regional failure. Additionally, the incidence of OTSCC among younger population (<50yrs) is on the rise; many of whom lack the typical associated risk factors of alcohol and/or tobacco exposure. We present data on single nucleotide...

BACKGROUND Liver hepatocellular carcinoma accounts for the overwhelming majority of primary liver cancers and its belated diagnosis and poor prognosis call for novel biomarkers to be discovered, which, in the era of big data, innovative bioinformatics and computational techniques can prove to be highly helpful in. METHODS Big data aggregated from The Cancer Genome Atlas and Natural Language P...

BACKGROUND Glioblastoma (GBM) exhibits profound intratumoral genetic heterogeneity. Each tumor comprises multiple genetically distinct clonal populations with different therapeutic sensitivities. This has implications for targeted therapy and genetically informed paradigms. Contrast-enhanced (CE)-MRI and conventional sampling techniques have failed to resolve this heterogeneity, particularly fo...

The chromosome 9p21 region has been implicated in the pathogenesis of multiple cancers. We analyzed 9p21 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from eight genome-wide association studies (GWAS) with data deposited in dbGaP, including studies of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), gastric cancer (GC), pancreatic cancer, renal cell carcinoma (RCC), lung cancer (LC), breast cancer (BrC), bl...

Genomic alterations of CDKN2A and CDKN2B in astrocytomas have been an evolving area study for decades. Most recently, there has considerable interest the effect and/or (CDKN2A/B) homozygous deletions (HD) on prognosis isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH)-mutant astrocytomas. This is highlighted by adoption CDKN2A/B HD as essential criterion astrocytoma IDH-mutant central nervous system (CNS) WHO grad...

We previously reported a novel association between CDKN2A nonpromoter methylation and transcription (ARF/INK4a) in human papillomavirus associated oropharyngeal tumors. In this study we assessed whether nonpromoter CDKN2A methylation in laryngeal squamous cell carcinomas (LXSCC) conferred a similar association with transcription that predicted patient outcome. We compared DNA methylation and AR...