The Systemic Approach to Cancer: Models and Epistemology

Systemic approaches have gained a prominent role in cancer research, enhancing the possibility of dealing with complex molecular networks and even expanding the focus of research to higher levels of organization above the cell. In this chapter I review some major examples: network models of the cell, with their landscapes of functional states and switch-like transitions, applied to gene expression and cell processes (particularly worthwhile is Laforge et al.’s Autostabilization-Selection Model); dynamic models of the regulatory interactions between cells and the Extra-Cellular Matrix; large scale descriptions of genomic heterogeneity. In systems theory, the whole is more than the sum of its parts, in so far as it has properties that are not encountered in the parts themselves. Also, the parts are transformed once the whole has been integrated. In the end, I will argue, that a Systemic Approach is interested not only in accounting relationally for how systems work, but in how their organization comes about, opening to deeper epistemological, theoretical and experimental challenges.