Breast Cancer and Biomedical Informatics: The PrognoChip Project

* Corresponding author Institute of Computer Science (ICS), FORTH, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Crete, Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB), FORTH, Dept. of Surgical Oncology, Medical School, University of Crete, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, Dept. of Pathology, Medical School, University of Crete, Crete, Greece, Prolipsis Diagnostic Breast Center, Athens, Greece. Abstract Breast cancer is the most common malignancy affecting women, the life time risk being approximately 10%. Breast cancer is both genetically and histopathologically heterogeneous, and the underling development mechanisms remain largely unknown. Global expression analysis using microarrays offers unprecedented opportunities to obtain molecular signatures of the state of activity of diseased cells and patient samples. The predictive power of this approach is much greater than that of currently used approaches, but remains to be validated in prospective clinical studies. The PrognoChip project is based on the synergy between Bioinformatics and Medical Informatics, following the lines of the new raising discipline of Biomedical Informatics. In this context we are moving towards the specification and creation of an Integrated Clinico-Genomics Information Technology Environment (ICG-ITE) where, the smooth integration between the clinical and the genomics worlds as well as the intelligent processing of the underlying data, enables the identification of reliable and clinically valid (i.e., in terms of prognosis) molecular (gene) markers.