MATCH: AUTOMATED DIAGNOSIS SYSTEM FOR THE TREATMENT OF COLON CANCER BY DISCOVERING MUTATIONS ON TUMOUR SUPPRESSOR GENES

A.Kupidura1,

1 Team Consulting Polska, Poland;

aleksandrakupidura@.gmail.com

Colorectal or colon cancer is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in Western populations. This cancer develops as a result of the pathologic transformation of normal colonic epithelium to an adenomatous polyp and ultimately an invasive cancer. Like most cancers, colorectal cancers have multiple causes, many of which remain unknown. Each of these conditions is caused in part by a known genetic mutation. Mutations are alterations in genetic material and take place in the genes, which are found in the long, chainlike molecules of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Genetic damage, or mutation, that occurs to these genes contributes to the development of a cancerous tumour.

MATCH Project goal is the development of an automated diagnosis system concerning the support of the treatment of colon carcinoma. The whole process is associated with the field of biological therapies for colon cancer tumours. The colon cancer automated diagnosis system (by discovering mutations on TSGs) is a computer based platform that addresses doctors, biologists, cancer researchers, pharmaceutical companies and medical staff.

MATCH project entitle the development of an automatic diagnosis system that aims to support treatment of colon cancer diseases by discovering mutations that occurs to tumour suppressor genes (TSGs) and contributes to the development of cancerous tumours. The utilization of results from the medical diagnosis system will contribute at the human health care section for the early diagnosis, pharmaceutical research and drug development on colon cancer.

The structure of the system that concerns the automatic diagnosis is analyzed in modules that will be responsible to gather and process all available information under a central management interface and output results for the medical treatment of colon cancer. The main modules that contribute to the system implementation and integration consist of the:

  1. Colon cancer ontology module. The diagnosis system is mapped around an ontology module where colon carcinoma diseases from clinical data will be associated with genomic molecular data.
  2. Proteomic information module. Access to protein sequence databases annotated with colon cancer disease related information (Swiss - Prot).
  3. Pattern discovery module. Development of data mining techniques for discovering structural and functional protein patterns concerning mutations on genes and proteins.
  4. GRID – support module. Use of GRID enabled open-source tools for genomic and proteomic data management.
  5. Simulation tools module. Development and embedment of visualization and simulation tools.
  6. MATCH project will provide to health professionals an advanced multi-functional platform for colon cancer prevention, pharmaceutical research, grouping of unrelated health care data and mainly new drug design and discovery.

Keywords: data mining techniques, Automated Diagnosis System, visualisation and simulation tools, Colon Cancer.