title: Genomic and systems approaches to translational biomarker discovery in immunological diseases.
abstract: The high failure rate of new therapeutic mechanisms tested in clinical development has spurred an upsurge in research dedicated to discovering biomarker readouts that can improve decision-making. Increasingly, systems biology and genomic technologies, such as transcriptional profiling, are being leveraged to aid in the discovery of biomarker readouts. For inflammatory and immunological diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and asthma, progress has been made in developing biomarkers to monitor disease activity, prediction of response to therapy, and pharmacodynamic (PD) measurements. In this review, we discuss recent successes and challenges in these endeavors, highlighting the importance of human clinical studies of standard-of-care treatments in control subjects and patients with disease as the most direct path toward identifying useful translational biomarkers for clinical development.
authors.affiliation: Informatics and Analysis, Merck and Co. Inc., 33 Avenue Louis Pasteur, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
authors.forename: Kenzie D
authors.initials: KD
authors.lastname: MacIsaac
authors.affiliation: Informatics and Analysis, Merck and Co. Inc., 770 Sumneytown Pike, West Point, PA 19486, USA.
authors.forename: I-Ming
authors.initials: IM
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Scientific Knowledge Discovery, Merck and Co. Inc., 126 East Lincoln Avenue, Rahway, NJ 07065, USA.
authors.forename: Joseph
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Menetski
authors.affiliation: Informatics and Analysis, Merck and Co. Inc., 33 Avenue Louis Pasteur, Boston, MA 02115, USA. Electronic address: christopher_roberts2@merck.com.
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Roberts
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D015415:Biomarkers / Q000378:metabolism; D015195:Drug Design; D023281:Genomics / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007154:Immune System Diseases / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000503:physiopathology; D007249:Inflammation / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000503:physiopathology; D049490:Systems Biology / Q000379:methods*; D057170:Translational Research, Biomedical / Q000379:methods
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers