| Date |
May 7, 2015 |
| Speaker |
Emmanuel Barillot
|
| Title |
Exploiting synthetic interactions and signaling network modeling to combat cancer
|
| Abstract |
Four decades of cancer molecular biology research have led to the identification of many molecular determinants of this pathology, and resulted in significant progress in medical treatment. First concepts like magic bullets and oncogene addictions were introduced with the idea that one single gene might have causal role in cancer, or that a strategy of treatment could be focused on one supposedly single gene fragility point. Though it bore fruits in biology and in clinics, this reasoning has shown its limitations when it appeared that the molecular pathways governing tumorigenesis and tumor progression are tightly interconnected in a complex network of interactions which covers essential cell processes named hallmarks of cancer (DNA repair, proliferation, death, differentiation, immune response...), and whose crosstalks, feedbacks and compensatory mechanisms invalidated the former simplistic reasoning and on the clinical side provided a profusion of tumor escape paths to existing treatments. The concept of synthetic pairwise interactions between genes that jointly control phenotypes was then introduced, and shed light on cancer biology as well as it opened perspectives of new therapeutic strategies, that exploits the availability of a growing list of targeted inhibitors which are able to inactivate specifically one given protein. The principle of synthetic pairwise interaction is very fruitful, but also shows limits, and it appears today that the modeling of tumor signaling network is required to explore these interactions, explain the biology of cancer, and design innovative treatment strategies. The talk will present several steps in this direction.
|
|
アブストラクト