The Axis of Progression of Disease

Starting with genetic or environmental perturbations, disease progression can involve a linear sequence of changes within individual cells. More often, however, a labyrinth of branching consequences emanates from the initial events. How can one repair an entity so fine and so complex that its organi...

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Main Authors:	Tartakoff, Alan M, Wu, Di
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Libertas Academica 2014
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4213200/

id	pubmed-4213200
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-42132002014-11-05 The Axis of Progression of Disease Tartakoff, Alan M Wu, Di Perspective Starting with genetic or environmental perturbations, disease progression can involve a linear sequence of changes within individual cells. More often, however, a labyrinth of branching consequences emanates from the initial events. How can one repair an entity so fine and so complex that its organization and functions are only partially known? How, given the many redundancies of metabolic pathways, can interventions be effective before the last redundant element has been irreversibly damaged? Since progression ultimately proceeds beyond a point of no return, therapeutic goals must target earlier events. A key goal is therefore to identify early changes of functional importance. Moreover, when several distinct genetic or environmental causes converge on a terminal phenotype, therapeutic strategies that focus on the shared features seem unlikely to be useful – precisely because the shared events lie relatively downstream along the axis of progression. We therefore describe experimental strategies that could lead to identification of early events, both for cancer and for other diseases. Libertas Academica 2014-10-19 /pmc/articles/PMC4213200/ /pubmed/25374458 http://dx.doi.org/10.4137/CIN.S17683 Text en © 2014 the author(s), publisher and licensee Libertas Academica Ltd. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC 3.0 License.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Tartakoff, Alan M Wu, Di
spellingShingle	Tartakoff, Alan M Wu, Di The Axis of Progression of Disease
author_facet	Tartakoff, Alan M Wu, Di
author_sort	Tartakoff, Alan M
title	The Axis of Progression of Disease
title_short	The Axis of Progression of Disease
title_full	The Axis of Progression of Disease
title_fullStr	The Axis of Progression of Disease
title_full_unstemmed	The Axis of Progression of Disease
title_sort	axis of progression of disease
description	Starting with genetic or environmental perturbations, disease progression can involve a linear sequence of changes within individual cells. More often, however, a labyrinth of branching consequences emanates from the initial events. How can one repair an entity so fine and so complex that its organization and functions are only partially known? How, given the many redundancies of metabolic pathways, can interventions be effective before the last redundant element has been irreversibly damaged? Since progression ultimately proceeds beyond a point of no return, therapeutic goals must target earlier events. A key goal is therefore to identify early changes of functional importance. Moreover, when several distinct genetic or environmental causes converge on a terminal phenotype, therapeutic strategies that focus on the shared features seem unlikely to be useful – precisely because the shared events lie relatively downstream along the axis of progression. We therefore describe experimental strategies that could lead to identification of early events, both for cancer and for other diseases.
publisher	Libertas Academica
publishDate	2014
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4213200/
_version_	1613150072800804864

The Axis of Progression of Disease

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