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.

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
student representative, Nicole Feng

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.