[Application of network analysis in diseases and drug studies]

A disease is rarely caused by a single virulence gene, but by an imbalanced regulatory network arising from dysfunction of multiple genes or their products. However, drugs intervene the occurrence and development of a disease by acting on multiple target points in the disease network and making a synergy effect on each target point, in order to achieve the therapeutic effect. Unlike traditional approaches focusing on a single molecule or pathway, network analysis with high-throughput data provides a new perspective for studying disease pathobiology and pharmacological mechanisms, and brings forth new ideas for multi-component and multi-target-point pharmacologic mechanisms of traditional Chinese medicines, in three aspects-establishment of relevant disease and drug network, network decomposition, and biological significant of sub-network.