The reprogramming of cellular signalling networks that leads to new phenotypes is a common phenomenon in morphogenesis, stem cell transformation, and tissue remodelling and cancer progression. Research in this area seeks to discover those newly activated and deactivated pathways, and in doing so obtain key drivers and biomarkers of the signalling network reprogramming and attendant cell transformation. This reprogramming of signalling networks is of growing importance in anti-cancer therapy design. The effects of reprogramming on cancer cell function can lead to oncogene addiction, aberrant epithelial–mesenchymal transitions, remodelling of tumor bioenergetics, changes in response to hypoxia, tumor invasion and others. Following substantial investigation into the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms of network reprogramming, key biomarkers for the majority of these transformations have been obtained and applied to cancer diagnostics, grading and prediction of therapeutic response to cancer therapy. An emerging issue in this field of research, stimulated by clinical observations of adaptive resistance to monotherapy regimes, is signalling network reprogramming induced by targeted drug therapy in cancer.
Author(s): Alexey Goltsov, Simon P. Langdon, David J. Harrison and James Bown