Systems biology of personalized medicine

Abstract

To achieve the promise of individualized molecular-based medicine, the application of informatic tools to the entire hierarchy of biological system interactions and dynamics will be required in order to promote the effective discovery, validation and application of new diagnostic and treatment strategies in a real-time environment. As the field of biomarker discovery continues to unravel the underlying molecular mechanisms of diseases, the utility of the acquired and expanding knowledge lags far behind. Systems Biology represents a pivotal component of the personalized medicine workflow through its ability to consolidate complex data and knowledge into definable networks, and reproducibly identify key convergence/divergence points representing the biomarkers of interest. In this chapter, we will provide a brief update in the field of personalized medicine, and how Systems Biology tools can be used to support biomarker discovery. This chapter emphasizes the potential utility of Systems Biology for the prediction of network-based treatments in oncology, using empirical biomarker data sets in conjunction with knowledge and pre-existing drug resources.