Systems Biology Approaches to Disease Marker Discovery

Sharon, Donald; Chen, Rui; Snyder, Michael

Our understanding of human disease and potential therapeutics is improving rapidly. In order to take advantage of these developments it is important to be able to identify disease markers. Many new high-throughput genomics and proteomics technologies are being implemented to identify candidate disease markers. These technologies include protein microarrays, next-generation DNA sequencing and mass spectrometry platforms. Such methods are particularly important for elucidating the repertoire of molecular markers in the genome, transcriptome, proteome and metabolome of patients with diseases such as cancer, autoimmune diseases, and viral infections, resulting from the disruption of many biological pathways. These new technologies have identified many potential disease markers. These markers are expected to be valuable to achieve the promise of truly personalized medicine.