Systems biology for complex diseases

Abstract

Systems biology views a living organism as an interacting and dynamical network of genes, proteins, and biochemical reactions which give rise to the function and behavior of that organism, and is considered as a powerfully analytical approach to reveal the essential mechanisms of initiation and progression for complex diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. The classical bio-medicine based on molecular biology, cell biology, genetics, and other experimental biology has made significant progress against diseases in general. However, the researchers on the biomedicine area still face the great challenge against the complex diseases, since the methodology of the classical experimental biology is mainly based on studying individual genes and proteins and treating organisms as simple and linear systems, which are not good enough to solve increasingly complicated problems of the diseases. Therefore, the methodologies and techniques of systems biology are strongly demanded for analyzing the molecular mechanisms of the complex diseases and providing new solutions to fight the complex diseases. The aim of this special issue is to collect the latest advances in developing new computational and experimental approaches to decipher the complexity of diseases or on providing the implications and explanations for disease mechanisms and therapeutic endeavors in drug research, from systems biology perspective. In this issue, there are two review papers, three research articles and two letters, which present recent research efforts in various aspects for understanding mechanisms of the complex diseases, including prostate cancer, ovarian cancer, liver cancer, diabetes, and neuronal