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Figure 1 | BMC Systems Biology

Figure 1

From: Insights from systems pharmacology into cardiovascular drug discovery and therapy

Figure 1

Network analysis serves an integral role in cardiovascular systems pharmacology. The drug–target network is built by connecting the cardiovascular drugs with their corresponding cardiovascular targets. Starting from this graph, it generates two biologically relevant network projections: the target–target network and the drug-drug network. In the target–target network, nodes represent targets, and two protein targets are connected to each other if they share at least one drug. In the drug–drug network, nodes represent drugs, and two drugs are connected if they are associated with the same protein target. A bipartite graph of gene-disease associations is constructed in which a gene and a disorder are connected if mutations in that gene are implicated in that disorder. From the gene-disease network, two biologically relevant network projections were generated. In the human disease gene-gene network, every two genes are applied to connect with a common disease based on the global gene-disease associations. The gene disease-disease network is transformed by connecting two disorders if they are associated with the same gene based on the gene-disorder associations. The drug-disease network is constructed by mapped the approved cardiovascular drugs to their corresponding indications. Physical interactions between proteins can also be used to produce the human protein-protein interaction (PPI) network. For cardiovascular pharmacology, these interaction networks will provide a global template for computational and mathematical systems modeling, simulation, and prediction.

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