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Cancer Cells Interact With Non-Cancerous Tissue
The particular sequence of DNA that an organism possesses (genotype) does not determine what bodily or behavioral form (phenotype) the organism will finally display. Among other things, environmental influences can cause the suppression of some gene functions and the activation of others.
The knowledge of genomic complexity tells us that genes and parts of genes interact with other genes, as do their protein products, and the whole system is constantly being affected by internal and external environmental factors. The gene may not be central to the phenotype at all, or at least it shares the spotlight with other influences.
Environmental tissue and cytoplasmic factors clearly dominate the phenotypic expression processes, which may in turn, be affected by a variety of unpredictable protein-interaction events.
The limitations of DNA-based techniques are not shared by cytometric-based techniques, which has the unique capacity to examine complex biological systems in their native state.
By incorporating the interaction of tumor cells with their stroma, vasculature and inflammatory cell interactions, known to be crucial for clinical response prediction.
These are the "real-time" insights that can only be achieved using human tissue in its native state. Cell function analyses offer these insights. The information moves clinicians from the realm of prognostics to one of predictive measures that patients most desperately need.
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