CANCER COMMONS: BIOMEDICINE IN THE INTERNET AGE - Collaborative Computational Technologies for Biomedical Research - page 161

11

CANCER COMMONS: BIOMEDICINE
IN THE INTERNET AGE

JEFF SHRAGER , JAY M. TENENBAUM , AND MICHAEL TRAVERS

11.1 Introduction 161

11.2 Genome - Based Cancer Treatment, Cancer Commons,

and the Molecular Disease Model 163

11.3 Updating the Molecular Disease Model 165

11.3.1 Personalized Virtual Biotech 165

11.3.2 Cancer Commons as a Macro scale N - of - 1 Adaptive Trial 169

11.4 Details of the Cancer Commons Platform 172

11.5 Discussion 176

References 177

11.1 INTRODUCTION

Despite the enormous strides medicine has made in the understanding and
treatment of human disease, millions of people each year succumb to cancer.
This chapter describes Cancer Commons, an approach to the treatment of
cancer that echoes the eloquent words of Alexander Dumas in his 1844 mas-
terpiece, The Three Musketeers: Un pour tous, tous pour un (“One for all, all
for one”). The central idea that drives Cancer Commons is that biomedicine
is essentially a huge ongoing experiment and the data resulting from every