The global relationship between therapeutic drugs and human genome is largely unexplored. Systems Pharmacology is focused on understanding drug action both therapeutic and adverse from a network perspective with the goal of anchoring all drug action in the human interactome. Such a holistic approach will be useful both for drug discovery, especially polypharmacology for complex diseases and prediction of adverse events. One long-term goal is to be able to develop algorithms that predict therapeutic efficacy and adverse event probability in individual patients. Members of SBCNY are actively working in the area of Systems Pharmacology and have made some of the earliest contributions to this emerging field.

Image: A network map of the FDA approved drugs and their protein targets in human cells. The image represents a bipartite network of interactions between drugs and their human gene products. The information about these interactions was obtained from the FDA Electronic Orange Book (EOB) and DrugBank. Gray nodes represent drugs and yellow nodes their known human protein targets (Entrez Gene names). [Source:Ma'ayan A, Jenkins SL, Goldfarb J, Iyengar R. Network analysis of FDA approved drugs and their targets. Mt Sinai J Med. 2007 Apr;74(1):27-32.]