Immunotherapy or biological therapy is the treatment of disease by activating or suppressing the immune system. Immunotherapies designed to elicit or amplify an immune response are classified as activation immunotherapies, while immunotherapies that reduce or suppress are classified as suppression immunotherapies. Immunotherapy is under preliminary research for its potential to treat various forms of cancer.
Bcl-2,encoded in humans by the BCL2 gene,is the founding member of the Bcl-2 family of regulator proteins. BCL2 blocks programmed cell death (apoptosis) while BCL2 family member can either inhibit or induce it. It was the first apoptosis regulator identified in any organism.
Autophagy is the natural,conserved degradation of the cell that removes unnecessary or dysfunctional components through a lysosome-dependent regulated mechanism. It allows the orderly degradation and recycling of cellular components. Although initially characterized as a primordial degradation pathway induced to protect against starvation,it has become increasingly clear that autophagy also plays a major role in the homeostasis of non-starved cells. Defects in autophagy have been linked to various human diseases,including neurodegeneration and cancer,and interest in modulating autophagy as a potential treatment for these diseases has grown rapidly.
Combination therapy or polytherapy is therapy that uses more than one medication or modality. Typically,the term refers to using multiple therapies to treat a single disease,and often all the therapies are pharmaceutical. 'Pharmaceutical' combination therapy may be achieved by prescribing/administering separate drugs,or,where available,dosage forms that contain more than one active ingredient.
Pamela Ann Silver is an American cell and systems biologist and a bioengineer. She holds the Elliot T. and Onie H. Adams Professorship of Biochemistry and Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Systems Biology. Silver is one of the founding Core Faculty Members of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.
Myc is a family of regulator genes and proto-oncogenes that code for transcription factors. The Myc family consists of three related human genes:c-myc (MYC),l-myc (MYCL),and n-myc (MYCN). c-myc was the first gene to be discovered in this family,due to homology with the viral gene v-myc.
p38 mitogen-activated protein kinases are a class of mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) that are responsive to stress stimuli,such as cytokines,ultraviolet irradiation,heat shock,and osmotic shock,and are involved in cell differentiation,apoptosis and autophagy. Persistent activation of the p38 MAPK pathway in muscle satellite cells due to ageing,impairs muscle regeneration.
Jason Swedlow is an American-born cell biologist and light microscopist who is Professor of Quantitative Cell Biology at the School of Life Sciences,University of Dundee,Scotland. He is a co-founder of the Open Microscopy Environment and Glencoe Software. In 2021,he joined Wellcome Leap as a Program Director.
Cyclin-dependent kinase 2,also known as cell division protein kinase 2,or Cdk2,is an enzyme that in humans is encoded by the CDK2 gene. The protein encoded by this gene is a member of the cyclin-dependent kinase family of Ser/Thr protein kinases. This protein kinase is highly similar to the gene products of S. cerevisiae cdc28,and S. pombe cdc2,also known as Cdk1 in humans. It is a catalytic subunit of the cyclin-dependent kinase complex,whose activity is restricted to the G1-S phase of the cell cycle,where cells make proteins necessary for mitosis and replicate their DNA. This protein associates with and is regulated by the regulatory subunits of the complex including cyclin E or A. Cyclin E binds G1 phase Cdk2,which is required for the transition from G1 to S phase while binding with Cyclin A is required to progress through the S phase. Its activity is also regulated by phosphorylation. Multiple alternatively spliced variants and multiple transcription initiation sites of this gene have been reported. The role of this protein in G1-S transition has been recently questioned as cells lacking Cdk2 are reported to have no problem during this transition.
Transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily M member 5 (TRPM5),also known as long transient receptor potential channel 5 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the TRPM5 gene.
Rac1,also known as Ras-related C3 botulinum toxin substrate 1,is a protein found in human cells. It is encoded by the RAC1 gene. This gene can produce a variety of alternatively spliced versions of the Rac1 protein,which appear to carry out different functions.
Ravi Iyengar,is a principal investigator at The Mount Sinai Medical Center.
Ming-Ming Zhou is an American scientist whose specification is structural and chemical biology,NMR spectroscopy,and drug design. He is the Dr. Harold and Golden Lamport Professor and Chairman of the Department of Pharmacological Sciences. He is also the co-director of the Drug Discovery Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Mount Sinai Health System in New York City,as well as Professor of Sciences. Zhou is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Cancer systems biology encompasses the application of systems biology approaches to cancer research,in order to study the disease as a complex adaptive system with emerging properties at multiple biological scales. Cancer systems biology represents the application of systems biology approaches to the analysis of how the intracellular networks of normal cells are perturbed during carcinogenesis to develop effective predictive models that can assist scientists and clinicians in the validations of new therapies and drugs. Tumours are characterized by genomic and epigenetic instability that alters the functions of many different molecules and networks in a single cell as well as altering the interactions with the local environment. Cancer systems biology approaches,therefore,are based on the use of computational and mathematical methods to decipher the complexity in tumorigenesis as well as cancer heterogeneity.
Dana Pe'er,Chair and Professor in Computational and Systems Biology Program at Sloan Kettering Institute is a researcher in computational systems biology. A Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator since 2021,she was previously a professor at Columbia Department of Biological Sciences. Pe'er's research focuses on understanding the organization,function and evolution of molecular networks,particularly how genetic variations alter the regulatory network and how these genetic variations can cause cancer.
Tumour heterogeneity describes the observation that different tumour cells can show distinct morphological and phenotypic profiles,including cellular morphology,gene expression,metabolism,motility,proliferation,and metastatic potential. This phenomenon occurs both between tumours and within tumours. A minimal level of intra-tumour heterogeneity is a simple consequence of the imperfection of DNA replication:whenever a cell divides,a few mutations are acquired—leading to a diverse population of cancer cells. The heterogeneity of cancer cells introduces significant challenges in designing effective treatment strategies. However,research into understanding and characterizing heterogeneity can allow for a better understanding of the causes and progression of disease. In turn,this has the potential to guide the creation of more refined treatment strategies that incorporate knowledge of heterogeneity to yield higher efficacy.
A senolytic is among a class of small molecules under basic research to determine if they can selectively induce death of senescent cells and improve health in humans. A goal of this research is to discover or develop agents to delay,prevent,alleviate,or reverse age-related diseases. Removal of senescent cells with senolytics has been proposed as a method of enhancing immunity during aging.
Mikaël Pittet is a Swiss research scientist.
Michael Z. Lin is a Taiwanese-American biochemist and bioengineer. He is an Associate Professor of Neurobiology and Bioengineering at Stanford University. He is best known for his work on engineering optically and chemically controllable proteins.
Sandro Santagata is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and a physician-scientist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital where he practices neuropathology. His research focuses on precision medicine in cancer biology.
