While cancer patients may be successfully treated for their original malignancies, many suffer from therapy-related problems, ranging from mild psychosocial disabilities over physiological impairments, to life-threatening physical sequelae, both during and after the completion of cancer therapy. During therapy, the dose of chemotherapy and/or radiation administered can be limited by a wide range of side effects on normal (non-cancerous) tissues, such as gastrointestinal injury, cardiotoxicity, or myelosuppression. After therapy has been completed, cancer survivors regularly suffer from chronic sequelae involving tissue degeneration, fibrosis, and organ dysfunction that may significantly impact their quality of life and may influence their long-term survival.
While there is appropriate awareness of the side effects of cancer therapy, comparatively little effort has been directed toward identifying the mechanisms by which cancer therapies induce side effects, and into establishing systematic strategies for their early detection and prevention, especially with respect to variations in individual risk profiles. By using single or multi-omics approaches and large-scale data mining, new, promising approaches attempt to tackle the complex biological pathways possibly involved in the different kinds of adverse reactions in cancer therapies and gain further insights towards precision medicine approaches towards their prevention or mitigation.
The goals of the proposed research topic are to increase the understanding of the adverse outcome from cancer treatment by using omics-based technologies including but not limited to genetics, epigenetics, metabolomics, and proteomics. We aim to present evidence from such studies on the general biological mechanisms and individual risk associated with short and long-term adverse treatment effects, including in the specific organ site or in the microenvironment and potentially identify novel targets for treatments or early predictive markers.
While cancer patients may be successfully treated for their original malignancies, many suffer from therapy-related problems, ranging from mild psychosocial disabilities over physiological impairments, to life-threatening physical sequelae, both during and after the completion of cancer therapy. During therapy, the dose of chemotherapy and/or radiation administered can be limited by a wide range of side effects on normal (non-cancerous) tissues, such as gastrointestinal injury, cardiotoxicity, or myelosuppression. After therapy has been completed, cancer survivors regularly suffer from chronic sequelae involving tissue degeneration, fibrosis, and organ dysfunction that may significantly impact their quality of life and may influence their long-term survival.
While there is appropriate awareness of the side effects of cancer therapy, comparatively little effort has been directed toward identifying the mechanisms by which cancer therapies induce side effects, and into establishing systematic strategies for their early detection and prevention, especially with respect to variations in individual risk profiles. By using single or multi-omics approaches and large-scale data mining, new, promising approaches attempt to tackle the complex biological pathways possibly involved in the different kinds of adverse reactions in cancer therapies and gain further insights towards precision medicine approaches towards their prevention or mitigation.
The goals of the proposed research topic are to increase the understanding of the adverse outcome from cancer treatment by using omics-based technologies including but not limited to genetics, epigenetics, metabolomics, and proteomics. We aim to present evidence from such studies on the general biological mechanisms and individual risk associated with short and long-term adverse treatment effects, including in the specific organ site or in the microenvironment and potentially identify novel targets for treatments or early predictive markers.
