Optimizing targeted cancer therapy: towards clinical application of systems biology approaches

Area of Science:

• Oncology
• Molecular Biology
• Systems Biology

Background:

• Cancer arises from genetic and epigenetic alterations activating signal transduction pathways.
• Targeted inhibition of these pathways is a promising therapeutic strategy.
• Robust characterization of kinase activity in patient samples is crucial for identifying therapeutic targets.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide a comprehensive overview of techniques for characterizing kinase activity in cancer.
• To discuss the advantages and disadvantages of these techniques for systems biology approaches.
• To highlight recent advances in array-based kinase activity screens for identifying oncological targets.

Main Methods:

• Review of existing technical concepts for kinase activity characterization.
• Discussion of array-based peptide-substrate kinase activity screening methods.
• Analysis of systems biology approaches for target identification.

Main Results:

• Various techniques exist for robust kinase activity characterization in cancer tissues.
• Array-based peptide-substrate kinase activity screens show significant promise.
• These screens can bridge the gap between aberrant signaling evaluation and targeted treatments.

Conclusions:

• Advances in kinase activity screening enable more effective selection of kinase inhibitors.
• Mechanism-based, patient-specific therapeutic strategies can be optimized.
• Network views of aberrant tumor cell signaling are critical for future cancer therapy development.