Systems Pharmacogenomics-Bridging the Gap

Biological systems are quintessentially complex. Normal function requires the constant orchestration of numerous pathways on widely varying spatial and temporal scales. To understand such a complex system, data has been collected on the molecular, cellular, organ, and population scales and across various -omes such as the genome, proteome, and metabolome. Unfortunately, it is often the case that each data set is analyzed in vacuo, without regard to information on other scales or -omes. Multi-scale integration of data types to answer fundamental and practical questions in biomedicine is a significant challenge to the experimental and computational biology communities. This is a topic that is being tackled in a significant way in Systems Pharmacogenomics – which is exploring systems biology approaches for drug treatment response.