May 31, 2009

Systems biology is the study of complex interactions in biological systems. MS involves any number of complex interactions between the nervous system, the immune system, and probably other systems as well. So it's a great candidate to try to understand using this new discipline. A new paper describes one approach to using systems biology in MS.

The researchers took a list of the proteins found in different types of plaques and ran them through four different software tools that looked for connections among the proteins based on known biological networks. The tools didn't come up with the exact same results, but they did produce common results regarding the significance of extracellular matrix protein interactions and signaling by integrin proteins in MS plaques. These results may indicate that blocking these pathways may be beneficial in MS.