IMR Press / FBL / Volume 22 / Issue 7 / DOI: 10.2741/4538

Frontiers in Bioscience-Landmark (FBL) is published by IMR Press from Volume 26 Issue 5 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Frontiers in Bioscience.

Review

Childhood cancers and systems medicine

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1 Department of Pediatrics, James H. Quillen College of Medicine, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee, 37614, USA
2 Department of Internal Medicine, James H. Quillen College of Medicine, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee, 37614, USA
Front. Biosci. (Landmark Ed) 2017, 22(7), 1148–1161; https://doi.org/10.2741/4538
Published: 1 March 2017
Abstract

Despite major advances in treatment, pediatric cancers in the 5-16 age group remain the most common cause of disease death, and one out of eight children with cancer will not survive. Among children that do survive, some 60% suffer from late effects such as cancer recurrence and increased risk of obesity. This paper will provide a broad overview of pediatric oncology in the context of systems medicine. Systems medicine utilizes an integrative approach that relies on patient information gained from omics technology. A major goal of a systems medicine is to provide personalized medicine that optimizes positive outcomes while minimizing deleterious short and long-term side-effects. There is an ever increasing development of effective cancer drugs, but a major challenge lies in picking the most effective drug for a particular patient. As detailed below, high-throughput omics technology holds the promise of solving this problem. Omics includes genomics, epigenomics, and proteomics. System medicine integrates omics information and provides detailed insights into disease mechanisms which can then inform the optimal treatment strategy.

Keywords
Omics
Systems Medicine
Cancer
Oncology
Pediatric
Genomics
Epigenomics
Metabolome
Kinomics
Genome Wide Association Studies
Tumor
Theranostics
Ominostics
Review
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