Systematic characterisation of network structures underlying adaptive resistance and susceptibility to sequential combination treatment in cancer

Targeted drugs, such as kinase inhibitors, has revolutionised cancer treatment. However, resistance to these drugs as monotherapies remains a major problem that prevents their full clinical impact. This thesis characterises in an unbiased and systematic manner, the network structures that underlie adaptive drug resistance against single-agent therapy and those that are susceptible to sequential combination therapy. Furthermore, this thesis develops a novel web-based app termed NetScan, which provides an unprecedented ability to ‘scan’, identify and visualise signalling networks with defined topological structure in real human signallome.