UT prof Johan Björkegren alongside his US collegue Eric Schadt assure that the tomorrow's medicine is very close to use genomic data for getting closer view into processes that cause diseases.
In a new review article pending publication in new Science journal Science Translational Medicine, researcher at the Tartu University Center for Translational Genomics, Prof. Johan Björkegren together with Prof. Eric Schadt from Mount Sinai School of Medicine write about how biology as we learned to know it will be transformed into what they call "the NEW biology". NEW also standing for "Network-Enabled Wisdom" alludes to their beliefs that molecular processes underlying physiology and disease will better be represented, and thereby understood, using representations of molecular networks rather than the two-dimensional pathways most frequently used today.
There are particularly three developments that now radically change the conditions under which medical sciences can be conducted. First, since the shift of the millennium, technologies to generate high-throughput genome-wide datasets have been much improved and are increasingly being offered at lower prices. Another important development is within computational sciences where algorithms to compute complex patterns now are available. Last, the paradigm shift driven by the NEW biology also requires huge data-handling capacities both relating to data storage in computer warehouses and processor capacities for huge computations. Both these tools are now becoming available. As these three developments meet, the NEW biology can evolve and will radically change the way we are used to conduct medical, as well as biological research.
The authors also focus on the need for a new type of clinical studies to better understand common complex disease using network biology. These cohorts are of particular interest to Estonia with its well-established reputation of performing high-end clinical studies. These cohorts follow in the footsteps of genome-wide associations studies (GWAS) but instead focusing on the number of patients, the concomitant characterization of genetic variation, genome transcription and epigenetic alterations, together with the characterization of full proteomes and metabolomes as a direct result of the previous processes are in focus. Tartu University with its new high-end Center for Translational Genomics could very well become one raw model for developing the NEW biology and thereby personal healthcare in the 20th hundred century.
The review also touches on different methods to extract molecular networks from genomic datasets and how GWA datasets can be more efficiently analyzed. In the intermediate to longer perspective, an atlas of molecular networks for physiological and pathological molecular processes will evolve and, according to the authors, pave the way of transforming todays reactive care into preventive and personalized.
Publication: NEW (Network-Enabled Wisdom) in Biology, Medicine and Health Care. Eric E Schadt, Johan LM Björkegren. Science Translational Medicine, January 4th 2012.
Additional information:
prof Johan Björkegren
The Cardiovascular Genomics Group
Department of Medical Pathology and Forensic Medicine
Center for Translational Genomics
University of Tartu
Mobile: +46 (0)73-356 81 81
Email: johan.bjorkegren@ki.se
