Tumor tissues are not pure but contain unknown quantities of normal cells. The normal contamination in the tumor sample complicates the differential methylation calling between tumor and normal. Our purpose here is to identify tumor purity and differentially methylated regions (DMR) from only tumor samples.
Furthermore, even in pure tumor tissues, different cells could have different methylation patterns due to tumor heterogeneity. We aim to identify methylation signature of different tumor subclone and deconvolute subclone structure from methylation profile of tumor tissues.
The ability to predict the response of a cancer patient to a therapeutic agent is a major goal in modern oncology that should ultimately lead to personalized treatment. Our goal is to investigate the molecular mechanism of cancer cells to drugs, and identify cancer patients that might respond better to certain cancer drugs based on the genetic, epigenetic, and gene expression status of their tumor cells.
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