Description of the Developmental Patterns of Epithelial Cells and Cancers Originating from Them Will Provide Many Sites for Therapy

Many types of cancers represent different forms of blocked differentiation, but the relationship with major, currently identified cancer driver mutational and epigenetic events is not well defined. Normal cellular differentiation depends upon hierarchically-organized sequences of control and synthetic events coupled with cellular proliferation. An ability to identify and possibly correct or otherwise modify defective cancer stem or daughter cell differentiation, or even non-malignant precursor cell differentiation occurring prior to the effect of oncogene and suppressor genomic activity should provide many new approaches to circumventing the oncogenic process. The use of whole-genome sequencing and related procedures coupled with computer-based analyses of developmental event trees, and with the numerous reports from the ENCODE (Encyclopedia of DNA elements) project that has uncovered the large number of potential underlying regulatory and other functions in the junk DNA of cells