Construccion, caracterizacion topologica y analisis biologico de la red de interaccion proteina-proteina asociada a las marcas distintivas (hallmarks) del proceso carcinogenico.

More than a unique alteration, cancer has been defined as a diverse group of diseases which molecular origin, pathological evolution, prognosis and treatment are dissimilar and highly heterogeneous. This intrinsic variation makes that the characterization of molecular events that are causally associated with the origin or progression of the disease is preferentially performed over each different cancer type. Cancer defining characteristics and dynamics study has been exhaustive. Different molecular approaches that go from the traditional forward and reverse genetics to the omics technologies, extensively used in the last years, have greatly contributed to the understanding of the molecular dynamics that govern the disease. Nevertheless, in spite of these multiple approaches, the specific cases in which a key molecular element that has been experimentally identified is turned into an applied tool to treat cancer are scarce. Similarly when such achievements are reached, the application spectrum of this new tool is almost always restricted to a specific cancer type. The difficulty of finding general regulators that could be directly linked with most of the cancer types can be partially attributed to the lack of implementation of systemic approaches to understand the disease with a holistic view. Recently, the development of systemic approaches associated with specific networks construction and cancer dynamics simulation, have allowed the understanding of cancer from an integrative perspective. although the carcinogenic process is highly heterogeneous, the transformed cell is distinctively characterized by the loss of its cellular identity in a tissue-dependent context, which indicates that key general molecular events that control the cell malignant transformation might exist. Douglas Hanahan and Robert Weinberg proposed ten cancer hallmarks which define convergent cellular processes that are intrinsic to any cancer cell. The systematic exploration and understanding of these processes represent a holistic perspective to approach the carcinogenic events from a concept of unicity. In the present research project, we propose a systemic strategy to approach the carcinogenic process, based on the construction, the topological characterization and biological analysis of the protein-protein interaction network associated to the cancer hallmarks postulated by Hanahan and Weinberg. With this strategy, by means of a detailed topological characterization and functional analysis of the constructed network, we pretend to obtain key biological information regarding the general molecular machinery that orchestrates the neoplastic transformation in cancer. In this way, specific hubs detection, the characterization of defined protein clusters, the detection of central proteins and the identification of particular hierarchical trees, will allow us the obtention of relevant biological information that can be used to postulate new key molecular elements that might control the neoplastic transformation when altered, and to understand the coordinate fashion in which cancer hallmarks interact to obtain the specific phenotype of the cancer cell