Quantitative Methods for Precision Medicine

by Rongling Wu (Author)

Modern medicine is undergoing a paradigm shift from a “one-size-fits-all” strategy to a more precise patient-customized therapy and medication plan. While the success of precision medicine relies on the level of pharmacogenomic knowledge, dissecting the genetic mechanisms of drug response in a sufficient detail requires powerful computational tools. Quantitative Methods for Precision Medicine: Pharmacogenomics in Action presents the advanced statistical methods for mapping pharmacogenetic control by integrating pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic principles of drug-body interactions. Beyond traditional reductionist-based statistical genetic approaches, statistical formulization in this book synthesizes elements of multiple disciplines to infer, visualize, and track how pharmacogenes interact together as an intricate but well-coordinated system to mediate patient-specific drug response.

Features:

• Functional and systems mapping models to characterize the genetic architecture of multiple medication processes
• Statistical methods for analyzing informative missing data in pharmacogenetic association studies
• Functional graph theory of inferring genetic interaction networks from association data
• Leveraging the concept of epistasis to capture its bidirectional, signed and weighted properties
• Modeling gene-induced cell-cell crosstalk and its impact on drug response
• A graph model of drug-drug interactions in combination therapies
• Critical methodological issues to improve pharmacogenomic research as the cornerstone of precision medicine

This book is suitable for graduate students and researchers in the fields of biology, medicine, bioinformatics and drug design and delivery who are interested in statistical and computational modelling of biological processes and systems. It may also serve as a major reference for applied mathematicians, computer scientists, and statisticians who attempt to develop algorithmic tools for genetic mapping, systems pharmacogenomics and systems biology. It can be used as both a textbook and research reference. Professionals in pharmaceutical sectors who design drugs and clinical doctors who deliver drugs will also find it useful.