Abstract
Human health and disease are emergent properties of a complex, nonlinear, dynamic multilevel biological system: the human body. Systems biology is a comprehensive research strategy that has the potential to understand these emergent properties holistically. It stems from advancements in medical diagnostics, “omics” data and bioinformatic computing power. It paves the way forward towards “P4 medicine” (predictive, preventive, personalised and participatory), which seeks to better intervene preventively to preserve health or therapeutically to cure diseases. In this review, we: 1) discuss the principles of systems biology; 2) elaborate on how P4 medicine has the potential to shift healthcare from reactive medicine (treatment of illness) to predict and prevent illness, in a revolution that will be personalised in nature, probabilistic in essence and participatory driven; 3) review the current state of the art of network (systems) medicine in three prevalent respiratory diseases (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma and lung cancer); and 4) outline current challenges and future goals in the field.
Abstract
Systems biology and network medicine have the potential to transform medical research and practice http://ow.ly/r3jR30hf35x
Footnotes
Number 4 in the Series “Personalised medicine in respiratory diseases” Edited by Renaud Louis and Nicolas Roche
Previous articles in this series: No. 1: Chung KF. Personalised medicine in asthma: time for action. Eur Respir Rev 2017; 26: 170064. No. 2: Bonsignore MR, Suarez Giron MC, Marrone O, et al. Personalised medicine in sleep respiratory disorders: focus on obstructive sleep apnoea diagnosis and treatment. Eur Respir Rev 2017; 26: 170069. No. 3: Mascaux C, Tomasini P, Greillier L, et al. Personalised medicine for nonsmall cell lung cancer. Eur Respir Rev 2017; 26: 170066.
Support statement: This work was supported, in part, by Instituto de Salud Carlos III (PI12/01117, PI15/00799, CP16/00039), Recercaixa-2012 (AA084096), SEPAR (PI065/2013, PI192/2012, PI68/2015), AGAUR FI-DGR 2016 PhD grant and AstraZeneca foundation COPD Young Researcher Award. CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya. This work was developed at the building Centre de Recerca Biomèdica Cellex, Barcelona, Spain. Funding information for this article has been deposited with the Crossref Funder Registry.
Conflict of interest: None declared.
Provenance: Commissioned article, peer reviewed.
- Received September 28, 2017.
- Accepted November 30, 2017.
- Copyright ©ERS 2018.
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