Systems Biology of Cancer: A Challenging Expedition for Clinical and Quantitative Biologists

Authors

Ilya Korsunsky, New York University
Kathleen McGovern, CUNY Hunter College
Tom LaGatta, New York University
Loes Olde Loohuis, CUNY Graduate Center
Terri Grosso-Applewhite, CUNY Graduate Center
Nancy Griffeth, CUNY Lehman College
Bud Mishra, New York University

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

August 2014

Abstract

A systems-biology approach to complex disease (such as cancer) is now complementing traditional experience-based approaches, which have typically been invasive and expensive. The rapid progress in biomedical knowledge is enabling the targeting of disease with therapies that are precise, proactive, preventive, and personalized. In this paper, we summarize and classify models of systems biology and model checking tools, which have been used to great success in computational biology and related fields. We demonstrate how these models and tools have been used to study some of the twelve biochemical pathways implicated in but not unique to pancreatic cancer, and conclude that the resulting mechanistic models will need to be further enhanced by various abstraction techniques to interpret phenomenological models of cancer progression.

Comments

This work was originally published in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, available at doi:10.3389/fbioe.2014.00027.