Laboratory of Experimental Medicine-Université Libre de Bruxelles, Route de Lennik 808, Brussels, Belgium.
Curr Pharm Des. 2010 May;16(14):1609-18. doi: 10.2174/138161210791164117.
Systems biology is an emergent field that aims to understand biological systems at system-level. The increasing power of genome sequencing techniques and ranges of other molecular biology techniques is enabling the accumulation of in-depth knowledge of biological systems. This growing information, properly quantified, analysed and presented, will eventually allow the establishment of a system-based cartography of different cellular populations within the organism, and of their interactions at the tissue and organ levels. It will also allow the identification of specific markers of individual cell types. Systems biology approaches to discover diagnostic markers may have an important role in diabetes. There are presently no reliable ways to quantify beta cell mass (BCM) in vivo, which hampers the understanding of the pathogenesis and natural history of diabetes, and the development of novel therapies to preserve BCM. To solve this problem, novel and specific beta cell biomarkers must be identified to enable adequate in vivo imaging by methods such as Positron Emission Tomography (PET). The ideal biomarker should allow measurements by a minimally invasive technology enabling repeated examinations over time, should identify the early stages of decreased BCM, and should provide information on progression of beta cell loss and eventual responses to agents aiming to arrest or revert beta cell loss in diabetes. The present review briefly describes the "state-of-the-art" in the field, and then proposes a step-by-step systems biology approach for the identification and initial testing of novel candidates for beta cell imaging.
系统生物学是一个新兴的领域，旨在从系统层面理解生物系统。基因组测序技术和其他分子生物学技术的日益强大，使得人们能够深入了解生物系统。这些不断增加的信息，经过适当的量化、分析和呈现，最终将能够建立一个基于系统的生物体不同细胞群体及其在组织和器官水平上相互作用的图谱，并能够识别出特定的细胞类型标志物。系统生物学方法在发现诊断标志物方面可能在糖尿病方面具有重要作用。目前尚无可靠的方法在体内定量β细胞量（BCM），这阻碍了对糖尿病发病机制和自然史的理解，也阻碍了新型疗法的发展，以保存 BCM。为了解决这个问题，必须确定新的、特定的β细胞生物标志物，以便通过正电子发射断层扫描（PET）等方法进行适当的体内成像。理想的生物标志物应该允许通过一种微创技术进行测量，从而能够随着时间的推移进行重复检查，应该能够识别 BCM 减少的早期阶段，并应该提供有关β细胞丢失的进展以及最终对旨在阻止或逆转糖尿病中β细胞丢失的药物的反应的信息。本综述简要描述了该领域的“最新进展”，然后提出了一种逐步的系统生物学方法，用于鉴定和初步测试新型β细胞成像候选物。
