Cancer Dynamics. Even though cancer researchers nowadays are trying to develop
many key cellular pathways susceptible to be tackled by therapeutic approaches, we are far from being able to consider some cancers as curable diseases in general terms.
From a pharmacodynamic point of view, the main potential molecular targets involved are driver oncogenes, tumor suppressor genes, growth factors and their receptors, transcription factors, tyrosine kinases, and cell adhesion molecules. If we consider possible targets at higher
organization levels, we can intervene in aspects such as chromatin organization, tumor microenvironment, angiogenesis, apoptosis, senescence, mitochondria metabolism, and immune pathways.
On the other hand, the Pan-cancer genome and transcriptome have been analyzed in more than 1500 pediatric leukemias and solid tumors. This analysis evidenced, for example, that
pediatric central nervous system tumors are genetically different from their adult counterparts. In the meantime, whole-genome sequencing analysis of more than 2,500 tumors has already been
done which is a continuing evolving genomic effort.
A reconstruction of the life history and evolution of mutational processes and driver mutation sequences of 38 types of tumors have been throughout analyzed in detail. This unveiled different chromosomal and gene abnormalities are present at different stages of the tumorigenesis process.
All the aforementioned means an essential part of the fascinating cancer machinery and the new
therapeutics that have been designed for many of the cellular targets are described with different
levels of success. Regarding oncogenes, it´s noteworthy that the RAS family one of the most
important.
Cancer Stud Mol Med Open J. 2020; 6(1): 1-4. doi: 10.17140/CSMMOJ-6-130