Translational bioinformatics and systems biology approaches for personalized medicine

Abstract

Systems biology and pharmacogenomics are emerging and promising fields that will provide a thorough understanding of diseases and enable personalized therapy. However, one of the most significant obstacles in the practice of personalized medicine is the translation of scientific discoveries into better therapeutic outcomes. Translational bioinformatics is a powerful method to bridge the gap between systems biology research and clinical practice. This goal can be achieved through providing integrative methods to enable predictive models for therapeutic responses. As a media between bench and bedside, translational bioinformatics has the mission to meet challenges in the development of personalized medicine. On the biomedical side, translational bioinformatics would enable the identification of biomarkers based on systemic analyses. It can improve the understanding of the correlations between genotypes and phenotypes. It would enable novel insights of interactions and interrelationships among different parts in a whole system. On the informatics side, methods based on data integration, data mining, and knowledge representation can provide decision support for both researchers and clinicians. Data integration is not only for better data access, but also for knowledge discovery. Decision support based on translational bioinformatics means better information and workflow management, efficient literature and resource retrieval, and communication improvement. These approaches are crucial for understanding diseases and applying personalized therapeutics at systems levels. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.