Molecular Tumor

This volume will be the first to provide a comprehensive description of tumor dormancy. It will define the clinical and biological aspects of this phenomenon, as well as the cellular and molecular mechanisms associated with tumor dormancy.

Since Bailey and Cushing (1926), all brain tumor classifications have been called histogenetic. The nosographic position that the tumor types progressively acquired in the classification systems derived from the resemblance of tumor cells to those of the cytogenesis, modified whenever new information became available from different biological research fields and especially from molecular genetics.

The development of cancer is a slow process and it very often takes a number of years before a tumor becomes clinically evident. No current te- nique is sensitive and specific enough to detect tumors at their earliest stage, i. e. , when the tumor is smaller than one billion cells. Consequently, the d- ease is usually diagnosed in an advanced state, very often when it is already beyond the reach of therapeutic strategies. This is the main stumbling block to the secondary prevention that would reduce cancer mortality.

PCR in Bioanalysis offers powerful PCR-based protocols and assays in actual use or potential use in clinical medicine and commercial biology.

Cancer is a multifaceted and genomically complex disease and data obtained through high throughput technologies has provided near complete resolution of the landscape of how genomic, genetic and epigenetic mutations in cancerous cells effectively influence homeostasis of signaling networks within these cells, between cancerous cells, tumor microenvironment and at the organ level.

Biomarkers are molecular indicators of a biological status and, as biochemical species, can be interrogated to evaluate disease status and therapeutic interventions. Biomarkers may be detectable in the blood, other body fluids, or tissues. The expectation is that the level of an informative biomarker is related to the specific type of disease present in the body.