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<p><span style="font-size: small"><b>Oncogenomics</b> is <span style="color: #000000">relatively new sub-field of genomics, which applies high throughput technologies to characterize genes associated with cancer. Oncogenomics is synonymous with &quot;cancer genomics&quot;. Cancer is a genetic disease caused by accumulation of mutations to DNA leading to unrestrained cell proliferation and neoplasm formation. The goal of oncogenomics is to identify new oncogenes or tumor suppressor genes that may provide new insights into cancer diagnosis, predicting clinical outcome of cancers, and new targets for cancer therapies. The success of targeted cancer therapies such as Gleevec, Herceptin, and Avastin raised the hope for oncogenomics to elucidate new targets for cancer treatment<sup id="cite_ref-Strausberg2004_0-0" class="reference">[1]</sup>.</span></span></p>

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<span style="color: #000000">Overall goals of oncogenomics</span></div>

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<p><span style="color: #000000">Besides understanding the underlying genetic mechanisms that initiates or drives cancer progression, one of the main goals of oncogenomics is to allow for the development of personalized cancer treatment. Cancer develops due to an accumulation of mutations in DNA. These mutations accumulate randomly, and thus, different DNA mutations and mutation combinations exist between different individuals with the same type of cancer. Thus, identifying and targeting specific mutations which have occurred in an individual patient may lead to increased efficacy of cancer therapy.</span></p>

<p><span style="color: #000000">The completion of the Human Genome Project has greatly facilitated the field of oncogenomics and increased abilities of researchers to find cancer causing genes. In addition, the sequencing technologies now available for sequence generation and data analysis have been applied and greatly contributed to the study of oncogenomics. With the amount of research conducted on cancer genomes and the accumulation of databases documenting the mutational changes, it has been predicted that the most important cancer-causing mutations, rearrangements, and altered expression levels will be catalogued and well characterized within the next decade. Cancer research may look either on the genomic level at DNA mutations, the epigenetic level at methylation or histone modification changes, the transcription level at altered levels of gene expression, or the protein level at altered levels of protein abundance and function in cancer cells. Oncogenomics focuses on the genomic, epigenomic, and transcript level alterations in cancer.</span></p>

<h2><span style="color: #000000"><span id="History" class="mw-headline">History</span></span></h2>

<p><span style="color: #000000">The genomics era became established with much success in the 1990s, with the DNA sequences of many organisms being generated. In the 21st century, the completion of the Human Genome Project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute has paved the way for many new endeavors for studying the functional genomics and examining the genomes which characterize different diseases. Cancer has been one of the main focuses.</span></p>

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<span style="color: #000000">Current technologies being used in Oncogenomics.</span></div>

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<h2><span id="External_links" class="mw-headline">External links</span></h2>

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