“Cancer Bioinformatics: Bioinformatic Methods, Network Biomarkers and Precision Medicine” is a special thematic series to be published across BMC Bioinformatics, BMC Cancer, Genome Medicine and Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics (JCBi).

Cancer remains one of the leading causes of death across the globe. Most cancer treatments work for only a subset of patients and there is still a great need for disease-specific biomarkers and individualized medicine, since a large proportion of patients receive ineffective treatments. It is essential that we develop accurate tools for delivering the right treatment to the right patient in the right time, based on biological characterization of each patient’s tumor. There is still a lack of tools for aiding early diagnosis, prognosis prediction, or predicting response to treatment. Increasing evidence that genomic, proteomic, and metabolomic analyses can be utilized to understand molecular mechanisms of cancer has led to increasing work within this area.

This series will specifically focus on new developments in cancer bioinformatics and computational systems biology and will present biologically interesting discoveries on cancer using computational methods, in addition to exploring the potential of clinical applications to improve the outcomes of patients with cancer.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Algorithms for clinical biomarker selection
• Integrative approaches
• Systems biology and network-based approaches
• Novel approaches to clinical trials
• Deep sequencing and proteomic profiling
• Epigenetic mechanisms and RNAs
• Drug discovery and development
• Individualized medicine

Submission of original research, methodology, software, and database articles are encouraged until 1st November 2012 but will be processed as soon as they come in.

Please direct any questions to Xiangdong Wang (Series Editor) at editorial@jclinbioinformatics.com. Please submit your manuscript here: BMC Bioinformatics, BMC Cancer, Genome Medicine and Journal of Clinical Bioinformatics, and state clearly in the covering letter that it is intended for this thematic series.