Epigenetic technologies to advance cancer detection and cancer biology

My laboratory is interested in understanding the chemical modifications of our genome, transcriptome, and proteome in human health and disease – cancer in particular – and translating this information into diagnostic and therapeutic opportunities that ultimately benefit patients. To do so, we use our unique expertise in chemical biology to develop cutting-edge technologies to decode the wealth of epigenetic information. Most notably, we developed TAPS, a revolutionary bisulfite-free and base-resolution direct sequencing method for DNA epigenetic modifications. We have further demonstrated the application of TAPS in cell-free DNA for accurate identification of early liver cancer and pancreatic cancer. Our ongoing efforts aim to establish a comprehensive human epigenetic tissue atlas, as well as develop single-cell epigenetic sequencing to study tumour heterogeneity. We are also developing novel RNA modification sequencing methods to decipher the epitranscriptome in cancer.