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Systems Biology Approaches in Cancer Pathology

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Cancer Systems Biology

Part of the book series: Methods in Molecular Biology ((MIMB,volume 1711))

Abstract

The complex network of the tissue system, in both pre-neoplastic tissues and tumors, demonstrates the need for a systems biology approach to cancer pathology, in which quantification of key tissue system processes is combined with informatics tools to produce actionable scores to aid clinical decision-making. A systems biology approach to cancer pathology enables integration of key system features that are relevant to diagnoses, patient outcomes, and responses to therapies. Key tissue system features relevant to cancer pathology include molecular and morphologic abnormalities in epithelia, cellular changes in the stroma such as immune infiltrates, and relationships between components of the system, such as interactions and spatial relationships between epithelial and stromal components, and also between specific immune cell subsets. Here, we describe a method for objective quantification of multiple epithelial and stromal biomarkers in the context of tissue architecture to generate a high dimensional tissue profile that can be used to build multivariable predictive models for cancer pathology.

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Acknowledgments

National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R44CA192416. We thank Lia Reese, Bruce Campbell, and Kathleen Repa for technical assistance in the development and validation of the TissueCypher® methodology described in this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cernostics, Inc., 235 William Pitt Way, Pittsburgh, PA, 15238, USA

    Aaron DeWard & Rebecca J. Critchley-Thorne

Authors
  1. Aaron DeWard
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  2. Rebecca J. Critchley-Thorne
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rebecca J. Critchley-Thorne .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. NNF Center for Protein Research, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Louise von Stechow

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© 2018 Springer Science+Business Media LLC

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DeWard, A., Critchley-Thorne, R.J. (2018). Systems Biology Approaches in Cancer Pathology. In: von Stechow, L. (eds) Cancer Systems Biology. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1711. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7493-1_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7493-1_13

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  • Publisher Name: Humana Press, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-7492-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-7493-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Protocols

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