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The Rise of “Network Medicine”

Clinical and biological researches have classically focused on distinct disease determinants, in which a study will identify a single gene or molecule to draw insight into complicated pathologies. However, the study of biological components in isolation greatly limits the capacity of research to explore the extensively interconnected pathways that contribute to disease etiology and development.

Recent articles such as “Network medicine: a network-based approach to human disease” and “The emerging paradigm of network medicine in the study of human disease” highlight the field of network medicine as framework for holistically investigating diseases, paralleling the complex and intertwined nature of human pathology. Network medicine offers the potential for more comprehensive understanding of complex human diseases, and therefore also the possibility of design of treatments and therapies of greater efficacy.

Within network medicine, nodes could represent a myriad of biological agents, such as organic compounds or pathogens, while edges could represent physical or conceptual links between them, such as a chemical interactions or a metabolic pathway. The articles also acknowledge the significance of phenotypic networks, in which nodes and edges can represent phenotype or gene expression and shared genes or genetic regulation. By identifying the established links between the nodes, these networks could be used as tools for studying the underlying complexity of pathological research.

 

Barabási, Albert-László, Natali Gulbahce, and Joseph Loscalzo. “Network Medicine: A Network-based Approach to Human Disease.” Nature Reviews: Genetics 12.1 (2011): 56-68.

Chan, S. Y., and J. Loscalzo. “The Emerging Paradigm of Network Medicine in the Study of Human Disease.” Circulation Research 111.3 (2012): 359-74.

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