Systems biology in inflammatory bowel diseases: ready for prime time.
OBJECTIVE
Ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease are the two predominant types of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), affecting over 1.4 million individuals in the United States. IBD results from complex interactions between pathogenic components, including genetic and epigenetic factors, the immune response, and the microbiome, through an unknown sequence of events. The purpose of this review is to describe a systems biology approach to IBD as a novel and exciting methodology aiming at developing novel IBD therapeutics based on the integration of molecular and cellular 'omics' data.


RESULTS
Recent evidence suggested the presence of genetic, epigenetic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic alterations in IBD patients. Furthermore, several studies have shown that different cell types including fibroblasts, epithelial, immune, and endothelial cells together with the intestinal microbiota are involved in IBD pathogenesis. Novel computational methodologies have been developed aiming to integrate high-throughput molecular data.


CONCLUSIONS
A systems biology approach could potentially identify the central regulators (hubs) in the IBD interactome and improve our understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in IBD pathogenesis. The future IBD therapeutics should be developed on the basis of targeting the central hubs in the IBD network.
Center for Systems Biomedicine, Division of Digestive Diseases, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA *Christos Polytarchou and Georgios Koukos contributed equally to this work.
Christos
C
Polytarchou
Georgios
G
Koukos
Dimitrios
D
Iliopoulos
D003093:Colitis, Ulcerative / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000235:genetics; D003424:Crohn Disease / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000235:genetics; D057890:Epigenomics / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D015212:Inflammatory Bowel Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000235:genetics*; D055432:Metabolomics / Q000639:trends; D040901:Proteomics / Q000639:trends; D049490:Systems Biology / Q000639:trends; D014481:United States