Chinese Journal of Cancer www.cjcsysu.com

In this editorial preface, I briefly r eview cancer bioinformatics and introduce the four articles in this special issue highlighting important applications of the field: detection of chromatin states; detection of SNP鄄 containing motifs and association with transcription factor 鄄 binding sites; improvements in functional enrichment modules; and gene association studies on aging and cancer. We expect this issue to provide bioinformatics scientists, cancer biologists, and clinical doctors with a better understanding of how cancer bioinformatics can be used to identify candidate biomarkers and targets and to conduct functional analysis. Key words Chromatin sates, SNP 鄄 containing motifs, functional enrichment analysis, gene association Editorial Cancer bioinformatics is a field that has recently emerged from traditional bioinformatics and clinical informatics. The general purpose of cancer bioin鄄 formatics is to discover biomarkers, therapeutic targets, novel pathways, and relationships among diseases or individuals, and to identify candidate causal factors o