Abstract

Big Data Medicine

Hans Lehrach, Director, Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics

The solution of many medically important problems depends primarily on being able to predict the behaviour of complex networks (e.g. the biological networks acting within a tumour, but also in the other tissues of the patient) under complex disturbances (e.g. a particular therapy). Decades of molecular cancer research, but also the recent genome revolution, have however still not been able to provide this urgently needed power to predict. For the last ten or so years, we have developed systems biology approaches, which we expect to be able to close the gap from deriving insights and data by both small scale and large scale analysis techniques, and the ultimate goal of being able to make medically relevant predictions from data generated on individual patients, based on a combination of second generation sequencing techniques with large scale modelling of the network of cancer relevant pathways in the individual tumour. Due to dramatic progress in sequencing techniques, as well as the modelling approaches, we expect this to become essential steps towards an individualised therapy for cancer and other important diseases.