Abstract

Cancer is a disease involving many genes, consequently it has been difficult to design anticancer drugs that are efficacious over a broad range of cancers. The robustness of cellular responses to gene knockout and the need to reduce undesirable side effects also contribute to the problem of effective anti-cancer drug design. To promote the successful selection of drug targets, each potential target should be subjected to a systems biology scrutiny to locate effective and specific targets while minimizing undesirable side effects. The gene p53 is considered a good candidate for such a target because it has been implicated in 50% of all cancers and is considered to encode a hub protein that is highly connected to other proteins. Using P53 as a test case, this paper explores the capacity of the systems biology tool, CellDesigner, to aid in the selection of anticancer drug targets and to serve as a teaching resource for human resource development.