Despite technological and diagnostic progress, oncology diseases are still a major health issue. The treatment and the early diagnostics of oncologic diseases are among global and national healthcare priorities. Several biomarkers are used for screening, diagnostics, prognosis, follow-up and monitoring issues of oncology diseases. Although these biomarkers are far from ideal, the ongoing research activities are focused on revealing targets for early detection of oncogenesis and prognosis in case of oncologic diseases.   
In simple words oncogenesis can be explained as the multi-stage process of normal cell transformation into tumor one. The tumors aren’t homogenous. Some pathologic cells of a tumor (Cancer Stem Cells) are similar to stem cells by the way of expressing specific proteins, although they express the ability of uncontrolled growth, which is unusual for stem cells. We expect, that that the transformation of tissue specific (non-cancer) stem cells to cancer stem cells is initial step of oncogenesis; this process is associated with:
-    Aberrant expression of transcription factors Sox2 and Oct4, as well as PIWI proteins and CTAs
-    Aberrant expression of PIWI proteins ensured aberrant expression (over- or down-expression) of piRNAs.
We postulate that aberrant expression of piRNAs may include over-expression of certain piRNAs (they can be considered as piRNAs with function similar to oncogenes), down- or even zero-expression of other piRNAs (these types of piRNAs can be considered as tumor suppressor ones). We also postulate that the early detection of cancer can be performed by a panel of biomarkers. This panel may include the above-mentioned specific target proteins and piRNAs. The present project aims to investigate the above-mentioned postulate in an interdisciplinary manner.