Systems Biology of Cancer

Description

With over two hundred types of cancer diagnosed to date, researchers the world over have been forced to rapidly update their understanding of the biology of cancer. In fact, only the study of the basic cellular processes, and how these are altered in cancer cells, can ultimately provide a background for rational therapies. Bringing together the state-of-the-art contributions of international experts, Systems Biology of Cancer proposes an ultimate research goal for the whole scientific community: exploiting systems biology to generate in-depth knowledge based on blueprints that are unique to each type of cancer. Readers are provided with a realistic view of what is known and what is yet to be uncovered on the aberrations in the fundamental biological processes, deregulation of major signaling networks, alterations in major cancers and the strategies for using the scientific knowledge for effective diagnosis, prognosis and drug discovery to improve public health.

Dr Sam Thiagalingam is an Associate Professor of Genetics and Genomics, Medicine and Pathology at the Boston University School of Medicine. He played a major role in establishing an association between genomic instability and loss of heterozygosity (LOH) in human cancers. He was the first to show that SMAD4 inactivation is a critical event during the late stages of colon cancer progression and sustained TGF signaling events are required to maintain epigenetic memory during breast cancer progression. Dr Thiagalingam also proposed a simple minded multi-modular molecular network (MMMN) cancer progression model as a road map to visualize the various gene alterations in modules of networks of pathways. His long-term goal is to identify novel cancer biomarkers and therapeutic targets by contributing to the 'big picture' of interconnected networks of events that mediate cancer progression to metastasis using breast and colon cancers as the model systems.