The goal of this initiative is to promote the analysis of cancer as a complex biological system, with the ultimate goal of developing reliably predictive computational models of various cancer processes, facilitating the development of cancer interventions. This will be achieved through the integration of experimental and computational approaches towards the understanding of cancer biology. This initiative will encourage the emergence of integrative cancer biology as a distinct field by establishing research programs in integrative cancer biology, which bring together cancer biologists and scientists from fields such as mathematics, physics, information technology, imaging sciences, and computer science to work on a common cancer biology problem.
An ideal program in integrative cancer biology will be organized around an important problem in cancer that balances, and seamlessly integrates, experimental biology with computation and modeling. Standard and high-throughput experimental methods will generate large volumes of data, which will be used in part as input for computational/modeling approaches to the biological problem.
Specifically, the Integrative Cancer Biology Programs (ICBP) will fund large multi-investigator teams capable of addressing questions of cancer complexity with a wide scope of research activities. The Programs will also be responsible for establishing training and outreach programs, in order to further develop the field by active knowledge dissemination and through educating future investigators in the necessary approaches and skills. The Programs will operate independently, but will be linked through a central focus on cancer, a common bioinformatics infrastructure, and a NCI-sponsored coordinating committee.
Examples of areas of interest include computationally-based modeling of critical cancer-related cell processes such as proliferation, migration, apoptosis, transcription and differentiation within the cancer cell including the microenvironment on both a molecular and cellular level.
