title: OCSANA: optimal combinations of interventions from network analysis.
abstract: Targeted therapies interfering with specifically one protein activity are promising strategies in the treatment of diseases like cancer. However, accumulated empirical experience has shown that targeting multiple proteins in signaling networks involved in the disease is often necessary. Thus, one important problem in biomedical research is the design and prioritization of optimal combinations of interventions to repress a pathological behavior, while minimizing side-effects. OCSANA (optimal combinations of interventions from network analysis) is a new software designed to identify and prioritize optimal and minimal combinations of interventions to disrupt the paths between source nodes and target nodes. When specified by the user, OCSANA seeks to additionally minimize the side effects that a combination of interventions can cause on specified off-target nodes. With the crucial ability to cope with very large networks, OCSANA includes an exact solution and a novel selective enumeration approach for the combinatorial interventions' problem.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  The latest version of OCSANA, implemented as a plugin for Cytoscape and distributed under LGPL license, is available together with source code at http://bioinfo.curie.fr/projects/ocsana.
authors.affiliation: Institut Curie, Paris F-75248, France, INSERM, U900, Paris F-75248, France. paola.vera-licona@curie.fr
authors.forename: Paola
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Vera-Licona
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bonnet
authors.forename: Emmanuel
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Barillot
authors.forename: Andrei
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zinovyev
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000378:metabolism; D066246:ErbB Receptors / Q000378:metabolism; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D018719:Erb-b2 Receptor Tyrosine Kinases / Q000378:metabolism; D015398:Signal Transduction; D012984:Software
chemical_list: D066246:ErbB Receptors; D018719:Erb-b2 Receptor Tyrosine Kinases