Systems biology and integrative omics in breast cancer

Abstract

Breast cancer is a complex pathology. The molecular origins of the disease can be traced back to DNA genomic alterations, gene expression deregulation, hormone disruption, metabolic abnormalities, protein failure, and signaling pathway alterations. Lifestyle and other exogenous influences may also modulate the onset, development, and outcome of breast carcinomas and their metastatic events. High-throughput omic technologies provide us with unprecedented tools to study such alterations at an extremely detailed level and have been established thus as essential instruments both in basic and clinical research and in translational medicine and therapeutics. A number of challenges arise when we consider how to interpret and optimize the results obtained from studying the data produced in such massive experiments. Considering this along with the multidimensional nature of the disease calls for new ways of reasoning. One of these new paradigms, maybe even the more relevant of them, is given by systems biology. Systems biology is the name given to the study of biological systems (such as cells, tissues, etc.) when we consider them as integrated units whose constituents parts interact, often in a complex nonlinear fashion. In this chapter, we will consider a number of successful systems biology approaches to breast cancer, firmly founded on the use and integration of data generated in high-throughput omic experiments.