Contribution of the -omics era to our understanding of preinvasive disease and progression to cancer

The term -omics refers to a biological field of study in which large scale network analysis techniques are used to interrogate various biological processes. Omics based technologies have been widely applied to studies of primary cancers. More recently, improvements in these techniques, such as increased sensitivity and decreased amounts of input sample has allowed their utilisation in the study of p-remalignant and preinvasive disease. Many premalignant lesions are known to persist for lengthy periods of time before progressing to cancer in only a small proportion of patients. Identification of the key genes and molecular mechanisms involved in progression may aid in identifying patients at high risk of progression and play a role in determining potential targets for prevention or treatment. This chapter outlines the current contribution of -omics technologies to our understanding of preinvasive and premalignant lesions of various types of adenocarcinomas.