Systems biology approach finds potential new MS drug target

Systems biology is an emerging scientific field which aims to understand how components (tissues, cells, molecules, etc.) in a living organism interact with each other and what effect these interactions have on the health of the organism. While the field is very new, it holds a great deal of promise for the study of diseases like MS which appear to involve complex system interactions. A team of scientists from Spain have applied systems biology approaches to better understand immune system interactions in MS (see the free access paper).

Analyzing gene expression data from people with MS and healthy controls, they determined how 20 genes upregulate and downregulate each other under normal conditions and how these alterations are altered in MS. They also found that with IFN-b treatment, many of these altered interactions were brought back closer to normal (but not all the way back). Finally, the scientists found one interaction involving the gene JAG1 that was abnormal in MS but wasn't improved by IFN-b treatment, and showed using animal and cell response data that JAG1 might be an effective therapeutic target in MS.