Network medicine for patients' stratification: From single-layer to multi-omics

WIREs Mech Dis. 2023 Nov-Dec;15(6):e1623. doi: 10.1002/wsbm.1623. Epub 2023 Jun 15.

Abstract

Precision medicine research increasingly relies on the integrated analysis of multiple types of omics. In the era of big data, the large availability of different health-related information represents a great, but at the same time untapped, chance with a potentially fundamental role in the prevention, diagnosis and prognosis of diseases. Computational methods are needed to combine this data to create a comprehensive view of a given disease. Network science can model biomedical data in terms of relationships among molecular players of different nature and has been successfully proposed as a new paradigm for studying human diseases. Patient stratification is an open challenge aimed at identifying subtypes with different disease manifestations, severity, and expected survival time. Several stratification approaches based on high-throughput gene expression measurements have been successfully applied. However, few attempts have been proposed to exploit the integration of various genotypic and phenotypic data to discover novel sub-types or improve the detection of known groupings. This article is categorized under: Cancer > Biomedical Engineering Cancer > Computational Models Cancer > Genetics/Genomics/Epigenetics.

Keywords: health-related data; multidimensional; network medicine; patient similarity network; patient stratification; precision medicine.

Publication types

  • Review
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Epigenomics
  • Genomics / methods
  • Humans
  • Multiomics*
  • Neoplasms* / diagnosis
  • Precision Medicine / methods