Cancer Systems Biology, Bioinformatics and Medicine

This book represents an attempt to gather all the information, to the best of our knowledge, relevant to the advances in the field of systems approaches to cancer, with the pivotal and essential contribution of world class scientists. Ideally, it will set the stage for a useful process of integration of the available knowledge to optimise the communication among basic and clinical researchers involved in the ultimate fight against cancer, whatever the field of specific interest, whatever the area of activity within the translational research process. This book provides a unique presentation of cancer systems, laboratory, clinical and bioinformatics approaches to research and clinical application and provides the foundation for major advances not possible with current methods. Specifically, the book: 1 sets the stage by describing the basis of systems biology and bioinformatics approaches, and the clinical background of cancer in a systems context; 2. describes the laboratory, clinical, data systems analysis and bioinformatics tooks and infrastructure, resources available; 3. demonstrates the application of these tools to cancer research; 4. Extends these tools and methods to clinical diagnosis, drug development and treatment applications; 5. and finishes by exploring longer term perspectives and conclusions. This book is a review of the state-of-the-art and goes beyond into new applications under development or proposed. It is written and highly referenced so as to provide a teaching monograph and practical guide aimed at students, academic and industrial researchers and managers in cancer research.