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Multiple Routes for Survival: Understanding How Cancer Evades Apoptosis

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Cancer Bioinformatics

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Abstract

Apoptosis is a process of programmed cell-death encoded in all multicellular organisms. The system is designed to remove damaged, unhealthy or unneeded cells during development and under certain stresses. At the tissue level, it plays a key role in maintaining tissue homeostasis. For example, the typical human body produces approximately 50–70 billion new cells by mitosis each day (Karam 2009), and the same number of cells will be terminated by apoptosis to maintain total cell homeostasis, suggesting that there is a functional link between growth and cell death by apoptosis. Malfunctions of the apoptotic system, in either its regulators or effectors, have been linked to a variety of human diseases. Examples include: (1) human degenerative diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, which are known to be associated with abnormally high activities of apoptosis, and (2) cancer that is considered by some as a disease of abnormally low activities of apoptosis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

    Ying Xu & David Puett

  2. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, USA

    Juan Cui

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  1. Ying Xu
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Appendix

Appendix

Table 7.1 Transcriptomic datasets of 15 cancer types are collected from the GEO database and used in our data analysis
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Xu, Y., Cui, J., Puett, D. (2014). Multiple Routes for Survival: Understanding How Cancer Evades Apoptosis. In: Cancer Bioinformatics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-1381-7_7

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