Network pharmacology: curing causal mechanisms instead of treating symptoms

Cristian Nogales*, Zeinab M Mamdouh, Markus List, Christina Kiel, Ana I Casas, Harald H H W Schmidt*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal(Systematic) Review article peer-review

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Abstract

For complex diseases, most drugs are highly ineffective, and the success rate of drug discovery is in constant decline. While low quality, reproducibility issues, and translational irrelevance of most basic and preclinical research have contributed to this, the current organ-centricity of medicine and the 'one disease-one target-one drug' dogma obstruct innovation in the most profound manner. Systems and network medicine and their therapeutic arm, network pharmacology, revolutionize how we define, diagnose, treat, and, ideally, cure diseases. Descriptive disease phenotypes are replaced by endotypes defined by causal, multitarget signaling modules that also explain respective comorbidities. Precise and effective therapeutic intervention is achieved by synergistic multicompound network pharmacology and drug repurposing, obviating the need for drug discovery and speeding up clinical translation.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)136-150
Number of pages15
JournalTrends in Pharmacological Sciences
Volume43
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2022

Keywords

  • NADPH OXIDASE
  • PREDICTIVE BIOMARKERS
  • CLINICAL-RELEVANCE
  • DRUG DISCOVERY
  • ANIMAL-MODELS
  • INHIBITION
  • CANCER
  • COMBINATION
  • BRAIN
  • ATHEROPROTECTION

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