27The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), which has created
two National Centers for Systems Biology in the US, has defi ned systems biology
as “an integrated experimental, informational, and computational science” that has
“benefi ted from advances in genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and other high-
throughput technologies and is driven by innovations in computational analysis and
simulation.” These centers will study systems biology systems, multi-scale model-
ing approaches, signaling, genetic, and metabolic networks, and genetic variations
in relation to complex phenotypes. Systems biology concept has been applied to
other sciences relevant to personalized medicine: systems pathophysiology of dis-
eases and systems pharmacology.
Systems Pharmacology
Systems pharmacology seeks to develop a global understanding of the interactions
between pathophysiology and drug action (Wist et al. 2009 ). It will enable an under-
standing of adverse effects of drugs by considering targets in the context of the
biological networks in which they exist. Experimental and computational approaches
allow systems pharmacology to obtain holistic, mechanistic information on disease
networks and drug responses, and to identify new drug targets and specifi c drug
combinations. Network analyses of interactions involved in pathophysiology and
drug response across various scales of organization, from molecular to organismal,
will enable the integration of the systems-level understanding of drug action and
enable drug discovery for personalized medicine. Systems pharmacology will inte-
grate pharmacogenetics, pharmacogenomics and pharmacoproteomics, which will
be described in later chapters. Figure 1.2 shows relation of systems pharmacology
to personalized medicine.
Lipidomics Neuroproteomics TranscriptomicsGenomics
NeurogenomicsFunctional genomicsMetabolomics
MetabonomicsStructural genomicsToxicogenomics ConnectomicsEpigenomics PharmacogenomicsFig. 1.2 Relation of systems pharmacology to personalized medicine
Role of Systems Biology in Personalized Medicine