Prognosticating Drug Targets and Responses by Analyzing Metastasis-Related Cancer Pathways

Cancer is a chronologic disease characterized by abnormal cellular proliferation and the potential to spread to other parts of the body. Activating invasion and metastasis is a distinctive feature of cancer. Despite metastasis being the key cause of failure of cancer therapy and mortality, it remains poorly understood. Metastasis is a complicated multi-step and multi-factorial process including countless number of genes and targets and is regulated by various signaling pathways. There is a complex interplay of co-occurring and mutually exclusive alterations within and across pathways indicative of an intricate pathway crosstalk. Understanding the dynamics of metastasis at molecular and cellular level and adopting a pathway-centric approach, identifying relationships of inter- and intrapathway recurrence and co-occurrence across different types of cancers, can help elucidate relevant mechanisms of pathway alterations that might act as drug targets for the development of new therapeutic approaches that can improve patient care. Drug response prediction using computational models also holds great promise to improve patient’s chances of successful recovery by providing personalized treatment.