Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
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drugs would open the paradigm of the drugs for individual
medical care. This technology will be expensive in the
initial stages, and so it will be used mainly by wealthy
people. When it makes various combinations openly
available, it will become less costly and be more widely
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CONCLUSION
This chapter has discussed basic ideas behind biological
robustness and its implications for cancer research and
treatment. Biological robustness is one of the essential
features of living systems that is argued to be tightly
coupled with evolution. It may also shape the basic archi-
tectural feature of biological systems that are robust and
evolvable. This chapter provides overall perspectives and
presents the framework of thoughts that may turn into more
solid theories of biological robustness. One of the major
consequences is to identify trade-offs between robustness,
fragility, resource demands, and performance. Fragility is
particularly relevant to disease. At the same time, cancer
establishes its own robustness as it evolves in a patient. Its
success may be a result of hijacking the robustness intrinsic
to the host system. Understanding of this complex nature of
biological systems may have profound implications for
future biomedical research. Several theoretically motivated
strategies can be derived. Some of them may not be prac-
tical, but if even one such idea becomes reality it will result
in ground-breaking progress in cancer therapeutics.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research is supported in part by ERATO-SORST Program (Japan
Science and Technology Agency: JST), the Genome Network Project
(Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology),
BBSRC-JST Strategic Collaboration Program of JST to the Systems
Biology Institute.
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