The Network Medicine Alliance
The new discipline of Network Medicine stems from our growing realization that conventional scientific reductionism is inadequate for dissecting complex diseases, increasing efficacy of prevention strategies, or tailoring precise therapies. In our view, health and disease must be viewed in the context of the interplay among multiple molecular and environmental determinants.
What is Network Medicine?
Network medicine opens new ways of understanding complex diseases
Network medicine: a network-based approach to human disease
Aim
The Network Medicine Institute and Global Alliance (previously the International Network Medicine Consortium) aims to balance hypothesis-driven and data (methodology)-driven approaches to healthcare applications, by using innovative technology, information, and big data to create an integrated set of principles and discoveries that can fully capture the interplay inherent in this complex system. The principles and discoveries aim to influence prevention, diagnosis, and treatment beneficially.
The Network Medicine Alliance (NMA) may identify new diagnostic tools, preventive strategies, and therapeutic targets, and repurpose or reposition approved drugs. NMA will not only identify targets and healthcare measures for high-risk patients, but may also address the needs of low-risk patients and the needs of patients affected by diseases in both the developed and developing world. The NMA, in these regards, would be able to guide policy makers and funding agencies globally, both public and private, to provide the highest quality, rationalized, sustainable healthcare system.
Strategy
The NMA will act as a key driver to educate policymakers in developing white paper publications in peer reviewed journals including articulating the consortium’s vision, philosophy, and strategy to implement its goals internationally
Members of the NMA
- Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, USA
- Emory University, USA
- Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Italy
- Istituto BioGem, Italy
- Karolinska Institutet, Sweden
- Northeastern University, Boston, USA
- Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy
- Semmelweis Egyetem, Hungary
- Technische Universitat München, Germany
- Università degli Studi della Campania, “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Italy
- Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy
- Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Italy
- Università di Bologna, Italy
- Universita di Padova, Italy
- Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain
- Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium
- Université de Genève, Switzerland
- Universiteit Maastricht, Netherlands
- Medical University of Vienna, Austria
- Complexity Science Hub Vienna, Austria
- Max Perutz labs, Vienna, Austria
- University Paris-Saclay, France
- Yale University, USA
- University of Pittsburgh, USA
- Cleveland Clinic-Lerner Institute, USA
- Stanford University, USA
- Georgetown University, USA
- University of California Los Angeles, USA
- University of California San Diego, USA
- University of California San Francisco, USA
- Mount Sinai Hospital System, USA
At Karolinska Institutet
KI Steering Group
NMA at Karolinska Institutet is powered by a steering group with researchers from different fields of science who are both researcher within the field of network analysis or user of it’s outcomes.
The KI NMA Steering group consist of
- Paolo Parini, LabMed, MedH – academic coordinator
- Magnus Boman, MedS
- Ingemar Ernberg, MTC
- Nanna Fyhrquist, IMM
- Volker Lauschke, FyFa
- Åsa Wheelock, MedS
- Nishi Dave, MedS (student representative)
Aim and values
The aim of the KI NMA Steering group is to promote and sustain initiative and research in the field of network medicine. Mainly by organizing symposia and exchange of researchers, teachers and students within NMA.
The KI NMA steering group will work according to the following values
- Forward thinking : to be truly innovative
- Societal focus: to aim to benefit society at large
- Interdisciplinary: to foster synergies between different areas of expertise
- Respect: to create equal opportunities for all
- Quality: to drive solid of research and education
- Transparency: to be compliant to ethical principles and good practice
Long term goals
The establishment of a KI-K-SciLife local virtual center for network medicine
- Build a strong interaction between national and NMA partners excellent in theory and methods development and the medical community (at KI-K) to catalyze competence building in network medicine
- Generate resources for interdisciplinary research projects in this area, for post doc exchange and recruitment and ultimately for higher research positions in NM at KI
Publications:
Pan L, Shan S, Tremmel R, Li W, Liao Z, Shi H, Chen Q, Zhang X, Li X. HTCA: a database with an in-depth characterization of the single-cell human transcriptome. Nucleic Acids Res. 2023 Jan 6;51(D1):D1019-D1028. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkac791. PMID: 36130266; PMCID: PMC9825435.
Sarno F, Benincasa G, List M, et al.; International Network Medicine Consortium. Clinical epigenetics settings for cancer and cardiovascular diseases: real-life applications of network medicine at the bedside. Clin Epigenetics. 2021 Mar 30;13(1):66. doi: 10.1186/s13148-021-01047-z.
Rethinking cancer : a new paradigm for the post-genomics era / edited by Bernhard Strauss, Marta Bertolaso, Ingemar Ernberg, and Mina J. Bissell. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, (2021). ISBN 9780262045216
Maron, B.A., Altucci, L., Balligand, J. et al. A global network for network medicine. npj Syst Biol Appl 6, 29 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41540-020-00143-9
Parini P, Altucci L, Balligand JL, Baumbach J, Ferdinandy P, Filetti S, Maron BA, Petrillo E, Silverman EK, Barabasi AL, Loscalzo J; International Network Medicine Consortium. The Network Medicine Imperative and the Need for an International Network Medicine Consortium. Am J Med. 2020 Sep;133(9):e451-e454. doi: 10.1016/j.amjmed.2020.03.034. Epub 2020 Apr 19. PMID: 32320696.