What is 'signal transduction'?
It's important when you talk about signal transduction to understand what that means, and I think the best way to describe that is on a cellular level. In the nucleus, the DNA which resides in the nucleus of a cell, there are certain signals that cause messaging and signaling and lead to cell growth or cell destruction, apoptosis or cell death, growth, metastasis, migration. For all cellular functions, whether it is a cancer cell, a non-cancerous cell, or a normal cellular body, signal transduction or signaling of any particular type occurs on an every second, every microsecond type of timing. Why is that important to cancer? Certain signals are misinterpreted when it comes to cancer, so the signal to grow may not be the signal that this cell should be doing. Should this cell be growing when it should be staying still? Is that a signal that is not appropriate? So part of our targets against cancer that are more targeted or specific to particular types of situations is aiming at signal transduction, aiming at the particular signals that get misinterpreted by cells, certain signals that shouldn't be going to the cells are going to the nucleus in order to stop cancer from developing or from growing, or make them more susceptible to standard chemotherapy as well.
