New Challenges for Cancer Systems Biomedicine

The future of oncology seems to lie in Molecular Medicine (MM). MM is a new science based on three pillars. Two of them are evident in its very name and are well known: medical science and molecular biology. However, there is a general unawareness that MM is firmly based on a third, and equally important, pillar: Systems Biomedicine. Currently, this term denotes multilevel, hierarchical models integrating key factors at the molecular, cellular, tissue, through phenotype levels, analyzed to reveal the global behavior of the biological process under consideration. It becomes increasingly evident that the tools to construct such complex models include, not only bioinformatics and modern applied statistics, as is unanimously agreed, but also other interdisciplinary fields of science, notably, Mathematical Oncology, Systems Biology and Theoretical Biophysics.

Alberto d’Onofrio is principal investigator in Systems Biomedicine at the European Institute of Oncology. His research interests focus on the application of mathematical and theoretical physics methodologies to study tumor biology, and the spread of infectious diseases. Webpage: http://www.ifom-ieo-campus.it/research/donofrio.phpPaola Cerrai is researcher at the Department of Mathematics of Pisa University, where she lectures in Mathematics and Statistics at the faculty of Biology. Her research interests focus on Mathematical Biology and Medicine. In particular: population dynamics, motion of bacteria and, more recently, growth of tumours and their interactions with the Immune System. She is also interested in the process (and in the related difficulties) of learning probability and statistics. She is intensely active in promoting the interdisciplinary cultural dialogue by organizing conferences and seminars.Alberto Gandolfi works at Istituto di analisi dei Sistemi e di Informatica.