Figure 6.

Prominent topics in network-based precision medicine. (A) Groups of patients that correspond to their communities (clusters) in a patient similarity network may shed light on distinct disease subtypes and thus lead to tailored, group-specific therapeutic strategies. (B) Identification of pathways (sparse, tree-like subnetworks) or functional modules (dense, clique-like subnetworks) associated with disease (subtypes) is related to inference of a condition-specific network (Section 2) and pathway reconstruction (Section 3). (C) Drug repurposing evaluates the fit of existing drugs to new diseases based on network “relatedness” between protein targets of the existing drugs and proteins associated with the new diseases, e.g. existing drug D2 may be a good treatment for the new pathogen because D2 targets two proteins (d and e), both of which directly interact with two of the proteins associated with the pathogen (a and c); the four proteins (a, c, d, e) form a clique, which further adds to their “relatedness.” (D) An important application of medical imaging lies in brain disorders. In connectome genetics, network structure of the brain meets -omics data. (E) An individual’s position in their social/contact network, along with demographic, personality, physical/mental health, etc. information about the other individuals, can give insights into the given individual’s health.