Cellomics as Integrative Omics for Cancer

Daniel      Boda

Abstract

Omics are wide concepts used to define metadata in life sciences and are increasing in number with the development of science. Thus the era of omics started with genomics, which studies the genome; followed by proteomics which focuses on proteins and metabolomics which covers the field of metabolites. Cellomics deals with "the study of cells" or "the knowledge of cellular phenotype and function". One of the main areas of cellomics application is cancer. As there is considerable amount of overlapping between these concepts, we studied papers published between 2005-2013, dealing with cellomics and cancer and found 192 articles, and further classified them in 3 main categories: A: wide genomic and proteomic data analyses; B: cellomics pattern analyses in different kinds of oncologic diseases; C: general cell behavior applied in oncology or studies of atypical cancer cells in different kinds of tumors. 83 papers were clustered in cluster A, 65 in cluster B and 60 in cluster C, 16 papers were included in more than one cluster as they focused on theme of overlapping. Cluster B and C were further sub clustered regarding cancer type and research field.

The papers covered a wide range of oncologic diseases: colon-rectal, gastric, breast cancer, ovarian, lung, all types of leukemia, prostate cancer, brain tumors etc; a wide range of cellular mechanisms: cell proliferation, cell migration, cell death, cell adhesion, cell counting, apoptose, phosphorylation, DNA damage, DNA ploidity, DNA sequencing, free circulating DNA etc. Samples used for the study were mainly plasma and tissue but saliva, feces, urine, exhaled breath concentrate etc were also reported for the study.

Regarding techniques, papers focused on: flow cytometry, tissue microarray, antibody microarray, reverse phase protein microarray, single nucleotide polymorphism; and also on mass spectrometry: MALDI-TOF-MS, SELDI-TOF-MS, liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) etc.

The article emphasizes the need for standardization. With the emergence of omics fields, there are now no boundary between cellomics, genomics and proteomics. The genes codify processes and proteins as well as cells; as cells are under DNA control and are influenced through RNA protein synthesis, therefore the determination of proteins as the cells as well as the determination of DNA might be referred to as being genomic, proteomic or cellomic.

Keywords: Cellomics, cancer, genomics, proteomics.

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