Comparison of biochemical pathways of colorectal cancer patients and healthy controls using a systems biology approach

Abstract

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a common cancer among all existing racial groups resulted in a remarkable rate of morbidity and mortality. Having diagnosed their malignancy in the very first stages, patients suffering this cancer have the chance to be treated. In spite of common methods in the early diagnosis of colorectal cancer, including serum carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) test and colonoscopy with undesirable sensitivity, high-throughput models based on metabolic perturbation of cancer cells could help to understand differences between tumor and normal samples. Such models would be able to use as a complementary approach for early detection of different types of cancers including CRC. In this study, Flux balance analysis (FBA) has been utilized to predict metabolic fluxes in both cancerous and normal cells. Our results, indicated flux rate alterations in concordance with gene enrichment analysis between cancerous and normal metabolic models, as expected. Further investigation revealed more agreement with previous experimental studies which demonstrate usefulness of current modeling approach.