Systems
pharmacology (SP) is an emerging branch in the field of pharmacological science
that applies systematic approaches to the study of pharmacology with an aim to
provide a holistic understanding of mechanism of action of drugs on various
levels of biological system. SP is a discipline bridging systems biology and
pharmacokineticspharmacodynamics (PK-PD) to enhance systematic understanding of
the efficacy and side effect of existing drugs in order to identify predictivebiomarkers for treatment outcomes and targetable pharmacophores for drugdiscovery. Network analysis is the main approach to studying SP with a focus on
identifying desired and undesirable targets within the networks of diseases and
drug responses, including chemicals, proteins or nucleic acids.
The successful
application of network analysis to SP relies on the advance of computational
analysis techniques and the availability of high throughput biological data on
drug discovery generated by “omics” studies, such as genomics, proteomics,
metabolomics and transcriptomics. Ultimately, network analysis could provide
global views on drug-target relationships and intertwining interactions among
cellular pathways in physiological and pathological processes. Systemspharmacology approaches have recently been implicated in the studies ofanticancer drugs, especially in new drug discovery and understanding of
variability in responses to chemotherapy, by providing insights systematically
into the relationships between tumour phenotypes, oncogenes and drug targets.
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