Next-generation sequencing in cancer epigenomics and potential clinical applications

Abstract

The arrival of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies has greatly empowered research in many fi elds, including the study of epigenetics in normal biological processes and in cancer. This has transformed epigenetics research from a targeted region approach to the whole epigenome scale at a singlenucleotide resolution. NGS has already been applied in several studies to dissect the cancer epigenome, such as determining the location of different histone marks in various cancer cell lines, whole methylome sequencing of colorectal cancer and adjacent normal tissue and sequencing of small RNAs from different cancer tissues and blood. Epigenetic profi ling studies conducted through a common platform (NGS) allow a better understanding of the complementary roles played by each epigenetic mechanism.