Analysing cancer signalling pathways: A structural bioinformatics approach

Abstract

Regulation of cancer and its development is a complex process that combines an aggregation of numerous mutations with dynamic changes and a complicated cross-talk among various types of cells involved in tumours. Poor understanding of the underlying cellular mechanisms involving various biological molecules associated with cancer has resulted in confusing prognosis. Thus, interpretation of relationships between these biological molecules, networks and pathways is necessary to understand the intricacies of cancer biology. Emergence of a specialised branch of biology, namely, bioinformatics, has enabled cancer biologists to bridge the gap between genomics and proteomics. One of its subdomains is structural bioinformatics, which includes techniques such as molecular modelling, high-throughput docking, mutation analysis, network modelling and drug designing. Robustness of the algorithms and pipelines involving these techniques has made efficient handling of heterogeneous and ever-evolving tumour data possible. In this chapter, we have tried to elucidate the application of structural bioinformatics in the analysis of cancer signalling pathways.