What are the various models available to us in cancer research following the revolution in molecular oncology?
In the past, pathologists looked at tumours in a descriptive way. Now, we are beginning to characterise tumours and its molecular features at an individual level. Molecular biology has today enabled the possibility of individual prognosis, because we can differentiate the characteristics of a tumour in a molecular sense. We need to understand the changes in the molecular machinery that cause these responses in a cell following a stimulus. Various approaches are being studied to target tumours. A cell has four features: proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis (cell death) and migration. In the early days of oncology, biologists told us that tumour cells divide more often compared to normal cells. So, it was rational to discover substances inhibiting cell proliferation. Herceptin and Gleevec are prime examples of substances that inhibit proliferation. Now we know that tumour cells sometimes proliferate slowly. Hence, we also have to understand the other three features of the cell at a
