title: Network medicine: a network-based approach to human disease.
abstract: Given the functional interdependencies between the molecular components in a human cell, a disease is rarely a consequence of an abnormality in a single gene, but reflects the perturbations of the complex intracellular and intercellular network that links tissue and organ systems. The emerging tools of network medicine offer a platform to explore systematically not only the molecular complexity of a particular disease, leading to the identification of disease modules and pathways, but also the molecular relationships among apparently distinct (patho)phenotypes. Advances in this direction are essential for identifying new disease genes, for uncovering the biological significance of disease-associated mutations identified by genome-wide association studies and full-genome sequencing, and for identifying drug targets and biomarkers for complex diseases.
authors.affiliation: Center for Complex Networks Research and Department of Physics, Northeastern University, 110 Forsyth Street, 111 Dana Research Center, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. alb@neu.edu
authors.forename: Albert-László
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Barabási
authors.forename: Natali
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Gulbahce
authors.forename: Joseph
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Loscalzo
mesh_terms: D030541:Databases, Genetic; D004194:Disease / Q000235:genetics*; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D053263:Gene Regulatory Networks; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study; D006801:Humans; D053858:Metabolic Networks and Pathways