Much progress has been made in our understanding of inter- and intracellular communications; the signaling network, as we see it today, is composed of more than 20,000 different proteins. It is a major challenge for the future to define how these proteins are arranged in pathways and how they operate to provide specificity, even though many common components are used and how the temporal aspects of signaling are achieved. The abundance of genes coding known signaling proteins (like protein kinases and phosphatases) indicates that perhaps a quarter of the entire genetic complement is somehow involved in signaling functions. It has become fashionable to accuse signal aberrations as a cause of malignant transformation; in cancer, inhibition of various downstream signal targets appears as a logical approach to a relatively selective therapy.
Go to Previous Page
Go to Next Page