Network Medicine to Combat SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19

The Network Medicine Alliance and Institute are committed to improving global health and advancing the field of Network Medicine. Network Medicine combines principles and approaches from the network sciences, systems biology, and human dynamics to understand the causes of human diseases and develop new treatments.

The challenge of controlling the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its varied disease manifestations will not be overcome by a single scientific discovery. The challenge calls for a multidisciplinary approach that draws from myriad disciplines such as network science, human dynamics, public health, computer science, and systems biology.

Clinical and basic research have historically been tasked with the search for new antibodies, vaccines, and treatments. However, there are limits to these disciplines when the clinical outcomes of a disease don’t follow a predictable pattern or whose pattern is too complex to detect using conventional methods, which is the case for COVID-19. 

Clinical manifestations of COVID-19 fall along a broad spectrum ranging from asymptomatic to symptomatic to terminally-ill patients. Even in the subgroup of markedly symptomatic patients, the severity of outcomes, organ systems involved, and survival rates can vary widely, 

The timely addition of Network Medicine is needed to supplement clinical and basic research to better understand how patient demographics, genetics, medical history, and other factors contribute to the disparate outcomes seen among COVID-19 cases. And determining how contributing factors cluster together in specific patient subgroups may reveal more predictable patterns. Network Medicine is too promising to ignore and may be our best chance to determine which existing medications can effectively treat specific COVID-19 patient subgroups until a vaccine is developed and novel treatments are approved. 

The Network Medicine Alliance and Institute’s primary focus during these challenging times is to nurture the multidisciplinary interactions needed to combat COVID-19 and to spread our research, tools, and insights with private and public institutions around the world.