Mining the Dark Matter of the Cancer Proteome for Novel Biomarkers

Abstract

The post genome era has ushered us into therapeutic target discovery empowering us to mine the genome using rational approaches. Numerous cancer targets have emerged from the genome project for diagnostics, therapeutics and response to therapy prediction. Among thousands of genes predicted in the human genome, nearly half of them remain uncharacterized. Considerable attention in the last decade has focused on the well-characterized known genes. However, the future of cancer target discovery resides in the uncharacterized or novel genes called the dark matter of the human genome. Realizing the importance of this vast untapped potential, recently the US National Cancer Institute announced a new initiative called