title: Modeling cancer: integration of "omics" information in dynamic systems.
abstract: The last 10 years have seen the rise of many technologies that produce an unprecedented amount of genome-scale data from many organisms. Although the research community has been successful in exploring these data, many challenges still persist. One of them is the effective integration of such data sets directly into approaches based on mathematical modeling of biological systems. Applications in cancer are a good example. The bridge between information and modeling in cancer can be achieved by two major types of complementary strategies. First, there is a bottom-up approach, in which data generates information about structure and relationship between components of a given system. In addition, there is a top-down approach, where cybernetic and systems-theoretical knowledge are used to create models that describe mechanisms and dynamics of the system. These approaches can also be linked to yield multi-scale models combining detailed mechanism and wide biological scope. Here we give an overall picture of this field and discuss possible strategies to approach the major challenges ahead.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Mathematics and Statistics, University, of São Paulo, Rua do Matão, 1010 - Cidade Universitária, São Paulo, CEP 05508-090, Brasil. stransky@ime.usp.br
authors.forename: Beatriz
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Stransky
authors.forename: Junior
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Barrera
authors.forename: Lucila
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ohno-Machado
authors.forename: Sandro J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: De Souza
mesh_terms: D019295:Computational Biology / Q000639:trends; D016208:Databases, Factual / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling / Q000639:trends; D052138:Genes, Neoplasm; D023281:Genomics / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D015201:Meta-Analysis as Topic; D053858:Metabolic Networks and Pathways / Q000235:genetics; D008954:Models, Biological; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D011506:Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D020543:Proteome; D049490:Systems Biology / Q000639:trends*