Author : Ayan Chatterjee and Uttam Kumar Roy

Since its birth in the 1980s, bio-informatics has been rapidly growing, keeping pace with the expansion of genome sequence data. Latest technological development of large-scale gene expression analysis using DNA micro-arrays and proteomics experiments has further boosted the importance of bio-informatics methods. In Bio-Informatics a lot of tools & algorithms are developed to study detailed shape of proteins & other biological molecules to develop drugs with more disease resistant capacity in reduced cost & time. The integration of wet experiments and the use of bio-informatics analysis have become an important part of the biological and clinical research of this century. The area of cancer research is not an exception. Cancer is one of the most common causes of death, taking nearly 7 million lives each year worldwide. So, methods of cancer treatment have become most challenging. Existing methods are based on chemotherapy drugs and radiation which are not target specific and lead to side effects. New cancer targeted therapies (therapeutic antibodies or small molecules) are more targets specific and less toxic. But, there remain a lot of challenges to the treatment of cancer including drug resistance, and high tumor tissue fluid pressure. In many solid tumors, for example, increased tumor tissue fluid pressure makes the activity of therapeutic agents less efficient. One promising way of meeting such challenges is targeted therapy that may be used to make targeting more specific and carry higher dosages of anti-cancer drug to tumor tissues. This article reviews and discusses recent advances in the treatment of cancer and the challenges that remain, with the help of Bio-Informatics. The statistics shows that the cancer cases will rise to 70-80% in coming two decades. This paper discusses with different possible targeted therapies.

Keywords: Mutation; target therapy; DNA; mRNA; Vaccine; Hormone; Virus; Spindle; Sequence Analysis

Article published in International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, Vol.5, No.6 (Dec-2015)