Systems pharmacology is the application of
systems biology
Systems biology is the computational and mathematical analysis and modeling of complex biological systems. It is a biology-based interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on complex interactions within biological systems, using a holistic ...
principles to the field of
pharmacology
Pharmacology is a branch of medicine, biology and pharmaceutical sciences concerned with drug or medication action, where a drug may be defined as any artificial, natural, or endogenous (from within the body) molecule which exerts a biochemica ...
. It seeks to understand how
drugs
A drug is any chemical substance that causes a change in an organism's physiology or psychology when consumed. Drugs are typically distinguished from food and substances that provide nutritional support. Consumption of drugs can be via inhalati ...
affect the human body as a single complex
biological system
A biological system is a complex network which connects several biologically relevant entities. Biological organization spans several scales and are determined based different structures depending on what the system is. Examples of biological syst ...
.
Instead of considering the effect of a drug to be the result of one specific
drug-protein interaction, systems pharmacology considers the effect of a drug to be the outcome of the
network
Network, networking and networked may refer to:
Science and technology
* Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects
* Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks
Mathematic ...
of interactions a drug may have. In 1992, an article on systems medicine and pharmacology was published in China.
Networks of interaction may include chemical-protein,
protein–protein, genetic,
signalling and physiological (at cellular, tissue, organ and whole body levels). Systems pharmacology uses
bioinformatics
Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combi ...
and statistics techniques to integrate and interpret these networks.
Systems pharmacology can be applied to drug safety studies as a complement to
pharmacoepidemiology.
See also
*
Quantitative Systems Pharmacology
*
Drug interaction
Drug interactions occur when a drug's mechanism of action is disturbed by the concomitant administration of substances such as foods, beverages, or other drugs. The cause is often the inhibition of the specific receptors available to the drug, ...
PhD programs
*
PharMetrX: Pharmacometrics & Computational Disease Modelling' (annual call for applications, July - Sept 15th)
References
External links
Quantitative Systems Pharmacology white paperSystems Pharmacology at Harvard
Pharmacology
{{pharma-stub