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Connecting the Dots: Applications of Network Medicine in Pharmacology and Disease
Author(s) -
Jacunski A,
Tatonetti N P
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
clinical pharmacology and therapeutics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.941
H-Index - 188
eISSN - 1532-6535
pISSN - 0009-9236
DOI - 10.1038/clpt.2013.168
Subject(s) - clinical pharmacology , disease , infectious disease (medical specialty) , systems pharmacology , medicine , drug development , pharmacology , drug , intensive care medicine , systems medicine , systems biology , computational biology , bioinformatics , biology , pathology
In 2011, >2.5 million people died from only 15 causes in the United States. Ten of these involved complex or infectious diseases for which there is insufficient knowledge or treatment, such as heart disease, influenza, and Alzheimer's disease. 1 Complex diseases have been difficult to understand due to their multifarious genetic and molecular fingerprints, while certain infectious agents have evolved to elude treatment and prophylaxis. Network medicine provides a macroscopic approach to understanding and treating such illnesses. It integrates experimental data on gene, protein, and metabolic interactions with clinical knowledge of disease and pharmacology in order to extend the understanding of diseases and their treatments. The resulting “big picture” allows for the development of computational and mathematical methods to identify novel disease pathways and predict patient drug response, among others. In this review, we discuss recent advances in network medicine. Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics (2013); 94 6, 659–669. doi: 10.1038/clpt.2013.168