Do cells use passwords in cell-state transitions? Is cell signaling sometimes encrypted?

Organisms must maintain proper regulation including defense and healing. Life-threatening problems may be caused by pathogens or by a multicellular organism's own cells through cancer or autoimmune disorders. Life evolved solutions to these problems that can be conceptualized through the lens of information security, which is a well-developed field in computer science.

Structure-based assessment and network analysis of targeting 14-3-3 proteins in prostate cancer.

Developing combination therapy for castrate-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) may require exploiting new drug targets outside androgen receptor and PI3K / AKT / mTOR signal transduction pathways implicated in prostate cancer (PCa) progression. One such possible new target is YWHAZ of the 14-3-3 protein family as this gene has prognostic significance for metastatic CRPC patients. However, there are no small molecules targeting YWHAZ commercially available.

A two-drug combination simulation study for metastatic castrate resistant prostate cancer.

Background: Prostate cancer often evolves resistance to androgen deprivation therapy leading to a lethal metastatic castrate-resistant form. Besides androgen independence, subpopulations of the tumor are genetically heterogeneous. With the advent of tumor genome sequencing we asked which has the greater influence on reducing tumor size: genetic background, heterogeneity, or drug potency?

Methods: A previously developed theoretical evolutionary dynamics model of stochastic branching processes is applied to compute the probability of tumor eradication with two targeted drugs.

Systems pharmacology using mass spectrometry identifies critical response nodes in prostate cancer.

In the United States alone one in five newly diagnosed cancers in men are prostate carcinomas (PCa). Androgen receptor (AR) status and the PI3K-AKT-mTOR signal transduction pathway are critical in PCa. After initial response to single drugs targeting these pathways resistance often emerges, indicating the need for combination therapy.

Protein Biomarkers for Early Detection of Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma: Progress and Challenges.

Approximately 75% of patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma are diagnosed with advanced cancer, which cannot be safely resected. The most commonly used biomarker has inadequate sensitivity and specificity for early detection, which we define as Stage I/II cancers. Therefore, progress in next-generation biomarkers is greatly needed.

Applications of targeted proteomics in systems biology and translational medicine.

Biological systems are composed of numerous components of which proteins are of particularly high functional significance. Network models are useful abstractions for studying these components in context. Network representations display molecules as nodes and their interactions as edges.

PiHelper: an open source framework for drug-target and antibody-target data.

Motivation: The interaction between drugs and their targets, often proteins, and between antibodies and their targets, is important for planning and analyzing investigational and therapeutic interventions in many biological systems. Although drug-target and antibody-target datasets are available in separate databases, they are not publicly available in an integrated bioinformatics resource. As medical therapeutics, especially in cancer, increasingly uses targeted drugs and measures their effects on biomolecular profiles, there is an unmet need for a user-friendly toolset that allows researchers to comprehensively and conveniently access and query information about drugs, antibodies and their targets.