Download Deciphering the links between Cancer and Aging via an integrOmics Network-based Meta-analysis approach (ACMON)

NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering
Research Project Write-up
Title of Project :
Deciphering the links between Cancer and Aging via an
integrOmics Network-based Meta-analysis approach
(ACMON)
Name of Supervisor :
Prof. Tassos Bezerianos
Contact Details:
email: [email protected], tel: 66013054
Short Description
The aging of populations worldwide is leading to an unprecedented increase
in cancer cases and fatalities. Understanding the links between cancer and
aging is therefore more important than ever. Moreover, the reported existence
of cross- and tissue-specific tumor markers hampers even more the
identification of bridges between the underlying processes.
From the drug design perspective, the failure of single-target drugs to treat
complex diseases with optimal efficacy shifted the therapy to multi-target
drugs. In parallel, the avalanche of network-based integromics approaches
allows the generation of systems-biology pipelines serving as subvening tools
for biomarker detection.
The proposed project aims at setting the hallmarks of the interconnection of
cancer and aging from the Systems Biology viewpoint to determine novel
prognostic and diagnostic target sets in the form of communities (modules)
with higher discriminative power. For this, a network-based integromics
meta-analysis pipeline will be designed to combine interaction data along
with a large cohort of publicly available expression data from multiple
cancerous tissues in mouse model and human for which age-related
expression data are also available.
The results open new avenues for developing effective therapies against cancer under
the aging prism. The output communities will enable the exploration of the ageassociated differences in incidence and progression between cancer sites that probably
reflect different processes and risk factors. Unraveling the age-related communities,
important for oncogenic development in different tissues, could allow more
personalized drug development and improved cancer treatments.