Toward precision medicine of breast cancer

• Published in: Theoretical biology and medical modelling Vol. 13; no. 7; p. 7
• Main Authors: Carels, Nicolas, Spinassé, Lizânia Borges, Tilli, Tatiana Martins, Tuszynski, Jack Adam
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England BioMed Central Ltd 29.02.2016; BioMed Central
• Subjects: Breast - pathology; Breast cancer; Breast Neoplasms - genetics; Breast Neoplasms - prevention & control; Breast Neoplasms - therapy; Care and treatment; Cell Proliferation; Complications and side effects; Computational Biology; DNA - metabolism; Female; Gene Regulatory Networks; Hormones - therapeutic use; Humans; Immunotherapy - methods; Incidence; Inflammation; Kaplan-Meier Estimate; Models, Biological; Patient outcomes; Pharmacogenetics; Precision Medicine - methods; Protein Interaction Mapping; Proteome; Review; Signal Transduction; Stem Cells - cytology; Transcriptome; United States
• ISSN: 1742-4682; 1742-4682
• DOI: 10.1186/s12976-016-0035-4

In this review, we report on breast cancer's molecular features and on how high throughput technologies are helping in understanding the dynamics of tumorigenesis and cancer progression with the aim of developing precision medicine methods. We first address the current state of the art in breast cancer therapies and challenges in order to progress towards its cure. Then, we show how the interaction of high-throughput technologies with in silico modeling has led to set up useful inferences for promising strategies of target-specific therapies with low secondary effect incidence for patients. Finally, we discuss the challenge of pharmacogenetics in the clinical practice of cancer therapy. All these issues are explored within the context of precision medicine.