Personalized Cancer Genomics

Abstract

Developments in biotechnology have enabled the design of whole genome assays for nucleic acid sequencing, gene expression monitoring, gene copy number evaluation, and epigenetic silencing that have had major effects on biology, cancer drug development, and clinical trial design. Because cancer is a disease of DNA alteration, these developments have had a particularly important effect on the development of personalized oncology. Facilitating this transition has been development of statistical methods for transforming this high dimensional data into useful biological information, p > n classification methods, and new designs for clinical trials. In this article we review some of the key statistical developments in this area.