Deciphering cell signaling rewiring in human disorders

TL;DR

This paper discusses how understanding and manipulating existing cell signaling pathways can help decipher disease mechanisms and develop targeted treatments, emphasizing the importance of molecular programs and cell crosstalk in pathology.

Contribution

It provides a framework for understanding cell signaling rewiring in diseases and highlights strategies to identify and target key molecular players for therapy.

Findings

Cell signaling mechanisms are hijacked in diseases.

Pathological states involve specific molecular characteristic combinations.

Targeting molecular players can potentially revert disease states.

Abstract

The knowledge of cell molecular mechanisms implicated in human diseases is expanding and should be converted into guidelines for deciphering pathological cell signaling and suggesting appropriate treatment. The basic assumption is that during a pathological transformation, the cell does not create new signaling mechanisms, but rather it hijacks the existing molecular programs. This affects not only intracellular functions, but also a crosstalk between different cell types resulting in a new, yet pathological status of the system. There is a certain combination of molecular characteristics dictating specific cell signaling states that sustains the pathological disease status. Identifying and manipulating the key molecular players controlling these cell signaling states, and shifting the pathological status toward the desired healthy phenotype, are the major challenge for molecular biology of human diseases.