Three research articles published in the MayissueofGenome Medicinehighlight the potential of post-genomic technologies in tackling carcinogenesis and improving therapy design.

Firstly, Peter Scacheri and colleagues provide aninsightinto how epigenetic silencing of genes in colon cancer cells is attained. The study demonstrates for the first time that silencing of non-CpG island-rich promoters, in the same fashion as CpG island-rich promoters, depends on hypermethylation of cytosines and loss of the H3K4me3 marker.

A secondstudyby Oliver Bathe and colleagues has critical clinical importance, as it analyzed whether the serum metabolomic profile of patients in different stages of colorectal cancer can predict their metastatic state. The researchers found this to be indeed the case, providing a novel method to accurately assess the stage of the disease. As such, the findings of this study may help to provide a more personalized therapeutic approach.

A thirdstudy, a comprehensive comparative analysis of nine state-of-the-art gene regulatory network inference methods, reports large differences in the accuracy of distinct methods. Applying the best-performing method to an ovarian carcinoma dataset, Mark Ragan and collaborators were able to predict both reported and novel regulatory interactions, which may be potential drug targets. This study featured inThe Australianand is part of a thematic series onCancer Bioinformatics.

Also in this issue, a new computational predictionframework, Consensus, is proposed for evaluation of uncertain gene variants, contributing to improved data visualization and clinical decision-making.

Commissioned articles include aReviewfrom Nadav Ahituv and colleagues discussing how next-generation sequencing is bringing a better understanding of the role of regulatory element variations in different responses to therapeutic drugs, while aReviewfrom Philippos Patsalis and Elisavet Papageorgiou covers recent advances in non-invasive prenatal diagnosis of aneuploidies. The issue also includes aResearch highlightcovering three recent studies on ultraviolet-sensitive syndrome published in自然通用电气netics, and aMeeting reportfrom Daniel MacArthur on theGenomic Disorders 2012 meeting.

Stay tuned for the June issue ofGenome Medicinefor pharmacogenomics of depression, return of incidental findings in the clinic, and much more!