Advancing Cancer Systems Biology: Introducing the Center for the Development of a Virtual Tumor, CViT

• Main Authors: Sean Martin, Le Zhang, Thomas S. Deisboeck
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publishing 2007-01-01
• Series: Cancer Informatics
• Subjects: Cancer; complexity; systems biology; multi-scale computational tumor modeling; semantic layered research platform; digital model repository
• Online Access: http://la-press.com/article.php?article_id=204

Integrative cancer biology research relies on a variety of data-driven computational modeling and simulation methods and techniques geared towards gaining new insights into the complexity of biological processes that are of critical importance for cancer research. These include the dynamics of gene-protein interaction networks, the percolation of subcellular perturbations across scales and the impact they may have on tumorigenesis in both experiments and clinics. Such innovative ‘systems’ research will greatly benefi t from enabling Information Technology that is currently under development, including an online collaborative environment, a Semantic Web based computing platform that hosts data and model repositories as well as high-performance computing access. Here, we present one of the National Cancer Institute’s recently established Integrative Cancer Biology Programs, i.e. the Center for the Development of a Virtual Tumor, CViT, which is charged with building a cancer modeling community, developing the aforementioned enabling technologies and fostering multi-scale cancer modeling and simulation.