Multilayer Omics Approach to Gastric Cancer: Circulating Biomarker Profiling in the Blood on Genetic, Epigenetic and Microbiome Levels

• Funding source: European Social Fund / Research Council of Lithuania
• Grant agreement number: 09.3.3- LMT-K-712-01-0130
• Date: January 2018 – July 2022
• Description: Projects that are aimed at deep, paradigmatic systems-based understanding of cancer are of great importance. The idea of the current research project is to evaluate whether genetic, epigenetic and microbiome biomarkers circulating in the blood are suitable for non-invasive diagnosis, monitoring and prognosis of gastric cancer, and whether these changes can be detected already in the pre-malignant conditions. This is the first study in the world to apply systematic interpretation of multi-layer omics data in gastric cancer research. The structure of this proposal is based on: (i) generation of a uniform, multi-layer data environment, integrating different data (genetic, epigenetic, microbiome, disease phenotype, demographic) of individual patients and (ii) development of systematic analytical environment that enables the exploration of multilevel, multi-time-point biological and clinical data for the identification of patterns in high-throughput data.