Integrating Technologies for Synthetic, Systems, and Spatial Approaches in Cancer Research
Abstract Emerging tools for spatial analysis, systems biology, and synthetic biology offer opportunities to observe, dissect, and perturb cancer mechanisms, to design strategies for the prevention of oncogenesis, and to identify therapies that lead to durable tumor control. Here, we summarize perspectives from the virtual Innovation Lab on “Synthetic and Systems Approaches to Interrogate Spatiotemporal Processes in Cancer” (S3) hosted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which assembled interdisciplinary experts to discuss cancer spatial organization and dynamic cellular interactions and how they can be addressed by leveraging novel synthetic and systems biology approaches. These discussions focused especially on cancer initiation, which results from a failure of systems control. To catalyze innovation across the research community, we summarize key insights from these events into a vision for integrated synthetic, systems, and spatial approaches in cancer research.
Authors
- Belinda Sena Akpa (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6098-7113)
- Subbaya Subramanian (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2544-480X)
- Ioannis K. Zervantonakis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2386-9553)
- Moumita Das (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0397-8886)
- Alexandros Poulopoulos (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5318-7388)
- Cole A. DeForest (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0337-3577)
- Lukasz J. Bugaj (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0749-2912)
- Joel S. Bader (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6020-4625)
- Alexander E. Vlahos (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2154-8791)
- Melissa Lambeth Kemp (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3781-8802)
- Tara L. Deans (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2361-2195)
- Dagan Segal (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0852-6501)
- Zev J. Gartner (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7803-1219)
- Timothée Lionnet (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1508-0202)
- Ran Brosh (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9714-8623)
- George M. Burslem (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2812-983X)
- Evgeniya V. Shmeleva (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7654-2960)
- Kolade Adebowale (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8925-4888)
- Ajit J. Nirmal (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4139-0618)
- Karmella Ann Haynes (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5975-577X)
- Lawrence J. Dooling (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1688-2066)
- Alison P. McGuigan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2803-0917)
- Pei Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-5075-3869)
- Adam Stevens (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1950-7325)
- Trisha Bansal (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7047-4389)
- Jose Reyes (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1133-4933)
- Hamid Reza Mirzaei
- Jennifer Totonchy
- Thea Tlsty
- Xin Lu
- Laura M. Heiser
- Awalpreet Chadha
- Jeffrey H. Chuang
- Alex Hughes
- Kunal Rai
- Joshua Breunig
- Chunru Lin
- Marina Pasca di Magliano
- Yanding Zhao
- Kirill S. Korolev
- Mary Kathryn Sewell-Loftin
Institutions
- University of Notre Dame (US)
- Boston University (US)
- Tufts University (US)
- University of Maryland, Baltimore (US)
- Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (US)
- Georgia Institute of Technology (US)
- The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (US)
- Johns Hopkins University (US)
- Emory University (US)
- Rochester Institute of Technology (US)
- Oregon Health & Science University (US)
- The University of Texas at San Antonio Health Science Center (US)
- University of Pittsburgh (US)
- University of California, San Francisco (US)
- Chapman University (US)
- University of Toronto (CA)
- University of Washington (US)
- University of Michigan (US)
- University of Alabama at Birmingham (US)
- University of Illinois Chicago (US)
- University of Chicago (US)
- NYU Langone Health (US)
- Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (AE)
- University of Minnesota Medical Center (US)
- Computational Physics (United States) (US)
- Universidad Cristiana Autónoma de Nicaragua (NI)
- Cancer Genetics (United States) (US)
- The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine (US)
- University of Houston (US)
- New York University (US)
- University of Baltimore (US)
- University of Tennessee at Knoxville (US)
- University of San Francisco (US)
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- ACS Synthetic Biology
- Published
- 2026-10-09
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1021/acssynbio.6c00339
- Primary Topic
- Gene Regulatory Network Analysis
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00